Mutiny: Plenty of shipboard action

Mutiny (2026) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for considerable profanity and strong, bloody violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.23.26

Jason Statham’s action thrillers usually follow a predictable, cookie-cutter series of plot beats:

 

• His character is a seasoned, hardened, stoic, impressively capable and highly decorated former cop/military officer equally adept with weapons and hand-to-hand combat, with a Tragic Memory in his past;

 

Moving cautiously through the innards of the cargo ship Artemis, Cole (Jason Statham)
and Angie (Annabelle Wallis) search for a first aid kit, which will allow him to attend to
her wounded shoulder.

• He has re-entered civilian life in either an isolated, quieter or conventional manner, usually befriending somebody along the way, but said person...

 • ... gets killed, for some nefarious reason, prompting a won’t-ever-stop vow of vengeance.

 

Lather, rinse, repeat. But why change? It always works...

 

This new entry in Statham’s oeuvre comes from scripters J.P. Davis and Lindsay Michel, who creatively dump Statham’s Cole Reed into an intriguing scenario during the bulk of the action.

 

I’m less impressed by director Jean-François Richet, who opens the film with a pointless flash-forward — what, he worried about gaining our attention? — and subsequently favors too many dizzy overhead drone shots and tight-tight-tight close-ups of Statham and the other actors. All are hallmarks of lazy, uninspired directing.

 

The flash-forward aside, events begin quietly, with Reed — a former Marine commando and London SCO19 Specialist Firearm police officer — five years into a happy position as security chief for his close friend and mentor, billionaire Thai shipping tycoon Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram). The feeling is mutual: Tibu regards Cole as family, and they enjoy playing chess together.

 

After a long and successful career, Tibu has decided to retire. He clearly regrets abandoning the empire that took a lifetime to build, particularly since his son, Kameron (Chaneil Kular), has no interest in the business. At the posh retirement party, Cole notices a dapper but somehow sinister figure (Arnas Fedaravicious) hovering in the background; their eyes briefly lock, and then the unnamed guest moves on.

 

Later, while driving Tibu home, their car is ambushed. Cole kills all the attackers, but not before Tibu is mortally wounded. Knowing he has very little time, Cole scoops up the killers’ IDs and flees. The sinister figure, with numerous bent Thai cops in his pocket, arranges for Cole to be tagged as Tibu’s killer; this version of events is blasted through all media outlets, and an arrest warrant is issued.

 

Cole notices that the killers crewed on the container ship Artemis; by fortunate coincidence, he resembles one of them. Using that man’s ID, he’s able to pass through Customs and board the ship, determined to figure out What The Heck Is Going On.

Shelter: Another solid Jason Statham thriller

Shelter (2026) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.1.26

Check your dictionary for the word “laconic,” and you’ll find a photo of Jason Statham.

 

He has perfected the role of Hard-Bitten Loner, a guy whose penetrating, steely eyed gaze invariably is accompanied by a scowl that (and only Statham can pull this off) forever seems on the verge of softening into a thin, mocking smile.

 

Fleeing both local police and a stop-at-nothing assassin, Mason (Jason Statham) and
Jesse (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) scramble to find a working vehicle, as a means of escape.

His newest action thriller is a solid piece of spyjinks, thanks to Ward Parry’s intriguing script, Matthew Newman’s rat-a-tat editing, and director Ric Roman Waugh’s taut direction. This puppy moves.

But not immediately. Things begin quietly.

 

Mason (Statham) lives an isolated existence on a tiny, rocky lighthouse island off Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. His only companion is a soft-eyed dog with no name. Mason passes the time by gazing out to sea from the top of his lighthouse, playing chess against himself, consuming constant meals of porridge … and often drinking himself to sleep.

 

Supplies are delivered, on a regular basis, by a similarly grizzled fellow (Michael Shaeffer) who brings his small fishing vessel as close as possible; he then sends his niece, Jesse (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), to shore in a rowboat. This ritual apparently has been unchanged for a long time; she drops off a crate filled with provisions, collects the now-empty previous crate, and returns to her uncle.

 

This time, however, she impulsively leaves a small, gift-wrapped package atop the newly delivered crate.

 

It remains unopened, when she returns the next time. She confronts Mason; he closes the door in her face.

 

Alas, she doesn’t make it back to her uncle’s boat this time. The sea has turned rough, thanks to an approaching storm; Mason watches, in horror, as both boats are swallowed by waves. He manages to rescue Jesse, but her uncle drowns. She’s injured, with a badly sprained ankle.

 

Jesse tearfully reveals that her uncle was her sole family; she has lost everything. As the next few days pass, Mason — despite himself — cannot maintain his gruff reserve.

 

Meanwhile…

 

In London, MI6 head Stefen Manafort (Bill Nighy) is grilled by an oversight committee, regarding his deployment of an all-encompassing AI surveillance network — Total Human Engagement Analytics, or THEA — which scoops up data from every possible source: the ubiquitous street cameras, car cameras, smart phones and anything else in the “connectivity of everything.”

 

Manafort blandly assures the committee chair that THEA has allowed MI6 to enhance the elimination of potential terrorist activity; she sternly counters that surreptitiously harvesting the data of every British citizen is, well, illegal. (He clearly couldn’t care less.)

A Working Man: Needs more work

A Working Man (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for drug content, constant profanity and relentless strong and gory violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

As demonstrated in last year’s The Beekeeper, blend director David Ayer and star Jason Statham, and the result is hyper-violence.

 

The calm before the storm: Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas) goes over construction project
details with Levon Cole (Jason Statham, right), while her doting father (Michael Peña)
watches approvisngly.

Although this new film doesn’t feature a death quite as appalling as The Beekeeper’s notorious off-the-unfinished-bridge sequence, there’s no shortage of baddies getting pummeled, shot, stabbed, sliced, diced, defenestrated, blown away and blown up by all manner of knives, guns, grenades and makeshift bombs.

Along with Statham’s signature karate, wushu, Wing Chun kung fu, Brazilian jiu jitsu and kickboxing.

 

At best, the result is a vicious, violent and vicarious guilty pleasure, but there’s no denying the satisfaction of watching deplorable villains get what they deserve. And goodness, scripters Ayer, Chuck Dixon and Sylvester Stallone came up with a bevy of baddies: Russian Mafia lords and goons, opportunistic mid-level snakes, human traffickers and a squadron of biker thugs.

 

Can one man really take on such a barrage, and live to tell the tale?

 

Silly question. We’re talking about Jason Statham.

 

The title credits montage reveals that Levon Cade (Statham) served as a member of the British Royal Guard during some nasty military action. In the present day, he has become a construction foreman employed by Joe Garcia (Michael Peña), who runs the operation alongside wife Carla (Noemi Gonzalez) and college-age daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas).

 

Aside from being haunted by his former military actions, Levon also is blamed by his wealthy ex-father-in-law, Jordan (Richard Heap, truly unpleasant), for his late wife’s suicide. To that end, Jordan seeks full custody of his adorable adolescent granddaughter, Merry (Isla Gie), because he sees Levon as a PTSD-riddled ex-soldier unfit to raise a child.

 

This is why Levon has been sleeping in his truck outside the construction site each night, and subsisting on home-cooked meals supplied by the Garcias and other sympathetic construction workers, while saving money to battle Jordan in court.

 

Set-ups of this nature are key to Statham’s popularity, because — as is the case here — he often plays troubled, blue-collar guys with a sense of honor, and an unwillingness to bow down to any sort of opportunistic scoundrels determined to screw regular folks.

The Beekeeper: Buzzes with guilty pleasure

The Beekeeper (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violene, pervasive profanity, sexual references and drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

There’s nothing like starting the new year with a vicarious revenge saga, particularly when the villain has been concocted for maximum audience satisfaction.

 

Having located the building that houses the illegal phishing call center that victimized
his friend, Adam (Jason Statham, left) promises to burn it to the ground ... which two
security guards find amusing. Until they don't...

Jason Statham continues to kick ass with pizzazz at age 56, with that grim, go-to scowl that always means somebody’s about to suffer well-deserved damage; The Beekeeper clearly has been fashioned around his crowd-pleasing strengths. Although the third act succumbs to excess that only a superhero could endure and survive, his occasional flinty smile and taciturn one-liners will keep viewers happy.

Director David Ayer is a veteran of action-packed thrillers; he and editor Geoffrey O’Brien move things along at a lively clip.

 

Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay is a long way from Shakespeare, but he sets the stage cleverly, and definitely knows how to punch our buttons.

 

The story opens quietly, shadowing beekeeper Adam Clay (Statham) as he lovingly cares for his hives, carefully scrapes the raw honey from combs, then processes that into jars of sweet syrup. He works and lives in a large barn rented from elderly Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad), who greatly admires the way that Adam and his bees have transformed her once-dilapidated gardens into things of beauty.

 

Alas, on this particular day, while Adam works outside, Eloise’s computer is hit with what appears to be a security alert. Understandably concerned — and the always regal Rashad is radiant, even when flustered — she calls the number on the screen. 

 

We see what she doesn’t: The call is routed to a scam center run by slick, slimeball conman Boyd Garnett (David Witts), who overcomes Eloise’s uncertainty — “Yes, you could call your bank first, but you’ll lose all your files” — with the smooth-talking élan of considerable experience.

 

This credibly written sequence could be extracted as an effective public service announcement: People, don’t do this at home!

 

The glee with which Boyd reels her in, to the delight of the equally skeevy dozens fleecing their own victims in the call center, is truly appalling. And, sadly, Eloise succumbs.

 

But she isn’t an average mark; along with several personal accounts, she manages a charity fund of more than $2 million ... all of which vanishes in an electronic heartbeat.

 

Eloise’s next move is tragic.

 

Adam’s subsequent reaction is cold fury.

 

Fast X: Over-revved lunacy

Fast X (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence and mild profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.19.23

This series has long verged on becoming a live-action cartoon, and the newest installment definitely crosses that line.

 

Physics, vehicular stamina and the frailty of the human body aren’t even an afterthought in director Louis Leterrier’s tenth (!) entry in this hard-charging franchise, but I’ll say this: He’s definitely the man for the job, having long ago helmed 2002’s enormously entertaining The Transporter and its 2005 sequel.

 

Confronted by a massive, spherical bomb rolling its way through the streets of Rome —
target: The Vatican — Dom and his comrades desperately try to re-route the threat.

This turbo-charged Fast escapade also gets plenty of momentum from a dog-nuts script by Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin, along with rat-a-tat editing by Dylan Highsmith and Kelly Matsumoto.

As an added bonus, Jason Momoa is a memorably and thoroughly reprehensible villain: a deranged, giggling sociopath prone to outré outfits and a mincing manner that make him even scarier. If he were granted a Snidely Whiplash mustache, I’m sure he’d twirl it with glee.

 

The story opens with a cleverly tweaked flashback to a key event in 2011’s Fast Five, as Dom (Vin Diesel) and his crew steal a massive bank vault laden with $100 million belonging to drug kingpin Herman Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). Our heroes subsequently drag the vault through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, laying waste to everything in its path, until the audacious climax on the Teodoro Moscosco Bridge.

 

In this “adjusted” version of events, Reyes perishes on the bridge: a demise witnessed by his violently unbalanced adult son, Dante (Momoa), who barely survives.

 

(This sequence also allows us to spend a few minutes with the late Paul Walker’s Brian O’Connor, which is a nice — and respectful — touch.)

 

As things kick into gear in the present day, Dante — who has spent the intervening 12 years plotting revenge — orchestrates the first in an increasingly lethal series of attacks on everybody Dom holds dear. The goal is not to killDom — at least, not immediately — but to make him suffer the deaths of his friends and family, most particularly main squeeze Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and their 8-year-old son, Little Brian (Leo Abelo Perry).

 

Meanwhile, Tej (Ludacris), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), Han (Sung Kang) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) jet off to Rome, to handle a heist assigned by the clandestine U.S. government “Agency” that runs off-the-books operations, and until recently has been headed by the equally mysterious “Mr. Nobody” (Kurt Russell).

 

Back home in Los Angeles, Dom and Letty get an unexpected visitor: a badly wounded Cipher (Charlize Theron), the über-nasty who bedeviled our heroes in the series’ previous two installments, most notoriously when she killed Diplomatic Security Service Agent Elena (Elsa Pataky) while Dom watched. 

 

Letty would just as soon put a bullet between Cipher’s eyes, but the latter has just barely survived her own unpleasant encounter with Dante. In a nod to the old mantra — “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” — an uneasy truce is struck.

Wrath of Man: Dismay of viewer

Wrath of Man (2021) • View trailer

Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and relentless violence

By Derrick Bang

I miss Guy Ritchie.

 

I miss the British director who burst onto the scene with snarky crime thrillers such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, populated by arch characters with improbable names such as Hatchet Harry, Barry the Baptist, Franky Four Fingers and Bullet-Tooth Tony, all bumping each other off in ways that would have been appalling, were they not so darkly hilarious.

 

As "H" (Jason Statham, second from left) begins his first day on the job, Bullet
(Holt McCallany, far left) introduces him to Hollow Bob (far right) and
Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett).

That Guy Ritchie attempted to go mainstream a decade ago, with uneven results, by tampering with pop-culture icons such as Sherlock Holmes and Napoleon Solo (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.)

 

Happily, the original Guy Ritchie returned with 2019’s The Gentleman, another cheeky crime thriller leavened by the writer/director’s caustic sense of humor.

 

Alas, that Guy Ritchie is AWOL in his new film. Wrath of Man hasn’t a single wry chuckle in its dreary 118 minutes; it’s nothing but a grim revenge saga with far too much collateral damage to be enjoyable on any level.

 

It’s not fun, merely tedious. No snark. No attitude.

 

It’s also a disappointing reunion with star Jason Statham, who was introduced — nay, detonated — in Lock, Stock and Snatch. Statham also isn’t fun here; he’s merely a grim rage machine, in an under-developed role that could’ve been played by any number of grade-C action stars.

 

The sole Ritchie touch evident — in a script co-written with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, and adapted from the 2004 French thriller Le Convoyeur — is the clever, non-linear structure that teases us with partial details, until finally Revealing All during the third act.

 

But that’s hardly enough to hold our interest, when surrounded by so many one-dimensional characters.

 

Maybe the Los Angeles setting is to blame. Ritchie needs to operate in his native Merry Olde, where British wit is an institution. Everybody knows that Los Angeles has no sense of humor.

 

Anyway…

 

After a deadly ambush on one of its armored vehicles, L.A.-based Fortico Securities replaces one of its slain guards with tight-lipped Patrick Hill (Statham), who immediately is dubbed “H.” He barely passes the necessary driving, behavior and shooting tests administered by the veteran Bullet (Holt McCallany), who nonetheless speaks up for the new recruit, despite the doubts of depot manager Terry (Eddie Marsan).

 

Fortico handles the transport of major cash sums that — for one reason or another — can’t be processed via banks (a good option for marijuana dispensaries). 

 

Hobbs & Shaw: Dumb & dumber

Hobbs & Shaw (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for relentless cartoon violence and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.2.19

Too loud, too preposterous, and too bloody long.

This isn’t a movie; it’s a pinball machine, with two-legged combatants randomly rolling around an obstacle-laden playing field, savagely bumping into each other for no particular reason.

With the fate of the entire planet resting on their shoulders, Shaw (Jason Statham, driving)
and Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) get ready for a rather improbable lassoing stunt.

The so-called director of this mess, David Leitch, graduated from stuntman to stunt coordinator over the course of two decades; succumbing to delusions of grandeur, he turned director for Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and this sorta-kinda entry in the Fast and Furious franchise.

All three films have the same thing in common: They’re soulless, live-action cartoons operating under the delusion that relentless mayhem compensates for a complete lack of plot and characterization.

It doesn’t.

Bravura action scenes work best when they’re an explosive surprise amid a story that has built tension, drama and emotional gravitas. (Consider the Matt Damon Bourne films as excellent examples.)

Leitch’s approach is akin to a diet of nothing but ice cream. No matter how much we enjoy such dessert as the delicious conclusion to a savory meal, being force-fed nothing but ice cream for 135 butt-numbing minutes — the length of this cinematic travesty — isn’t merely tedious; it becomes acutely painful.

In fairness, Leitch can’t take the sole blame; this misbegotten script comes from Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce, who deserve some sort of chutzpah award for having been paid for this utter absence of anything resembling an actual story. The 135-minute result actually is rather impressive, for its vacuousness.

Dwayne Johnson’s whup-ass and Jason Statham’s martial-arts beatdowns have been lots of fun in the past, and — goodness knows — both have starred in their share of brain-dead clunkers (Skyscraper and The Meg, respectively, in the recent past). In many cases, the two action stars have skated by via droll ’tude and sheer force of incandescent personality; they’re usually a lot of fun to watch.

That said, I suspect Hobbs & Shaw will task the patience of even their most ardent fans.

The Meg: Waterlogged

The Meg (2018) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, profanity, bloody violence and fleeting gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.10.18

Those with a fondness for 1960s TV shows will recall that director/producer Irwin Allen was responsible for several of the most laughably atrocious sci-fi shows ever unleashed on the small screen: Lost in Space, Land of the Giants and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Having successfully "tagged" the megalodon with a homing device, and now able to track
it, our plucky monster hunters — from left, Mac (Cliff Curtis), Jonas (Jason Statham),
Jaxx (Ruby Rose), Suyin (Bingbing Li), Lori (Jessica McNamee), DJ (Page Kennedy)
and little Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai) — wonder what to do next.

This movie plays like a standard-issue Voyage episode with delusions of A-list grandeur: same ludicrous script; same wafer-thin, cardboard characters; same inane dialog; same jarringly inappropriate attempts at humor. We even get nods to key elements from the Irwin Allen playbook: a sleek underwater craft that looks strikingly like the Voyage flying sub; and a precocious kid who seems far more intelligent than most of the nearby adults.

(With no offense intended to Billy Mumy, Shuya Sophia Cai’s Meiying is a lot cuter than Will Robinson on his best day.)

And when director Jon Turteltaub and his three writers — Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber — aren’t mimicking Voyage, they’re ripping off Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. Same underwater-whatzit-towing-a-floating-platform shot. Same ocean-bound jump scares. (I’m surprised nobody here said “We need a bigger boat.”)

The Meg is yet another entry in the recent wave of U.S./Asian co-productions, in this case Warner Bros. aligned with China’s Gravity Pictures. As was the case with Pacific Rim: Uprising and Skyscraper, such collaborations give us not the best of both cultures, but the worst. Enduring lazy, sloppy, lowest-common-denominator Hollywood junk is bad enough; watching it intertwined with equally vapid Chinese pop-culture elements is a special sort of torture.

This is the nadir of summertime popcorn adventure, bereft of even the faintest semblance of reasonable behavior by anything approaching a credible character. The Meg is a live-action cartoon, which I suppose can be enjoyed on that level, if viewers are willing to check expectations at the box office.

But don’t expect anything better than the Syfy Channel’s deservedly maligned Sharknado series. Much of Monday evening’s sold-out preview audience spent a lot of time unleashing eye-rolling snickers of contempt.

The Meg began life as a 1997 novel by American science-fiction author Steven Robert Alten, who built it into a franchise that has produced six more books as of this year’s Meg: Generations, with another expected in 2019. (The mind doth boggle.) This film’s script borrows very little aside from the first novel’s basic premise: that the Mariana Trench is much deeper than believed, because its “bottom” actually is a cold water layer that covers a hitherto undiscovered sub-ocean, populated by all manner of strange creatures.

Including a massive prehistoric shark known as a megalodon. (An actual creature, as far as we know; a model of megalodon jaws can be viewed at the American Museum of Natural History.)

The Fate of the Furious: Over-revved

The Fate of the Furious (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and generously, for relentless, excessive violence and destruction, and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.14.17

Well, here’s a reason not to get a car with computer-controlled ignition and navigational systems.

Dismayed by the realization that their buddy Dominic has gone rogue, the rest of the
gang — from left, roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges), Little Nobody
(Scott Eastwood), Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) and
Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) — ponders the next move.

You just never know when an evil megalomaniac bent on world domination might hack the vehicle, to crash it — and hundreds of others — into a Russian ambassador’s armor-plated limousine, in order to steal a suitcase containing the launch codes for all of his country’s nuclear missiles.

(Hey. It could happen.)

Although there’s some vicarious delight to be experienced from this and the many other big-ticket sequences in director F. Gary Gray’s newest installment in this franchise, The Fate of the Furious is a textbook example of wretched excess: too little substance, too much spectacle.

Way too much. At 136 minutes, this gas-guzzling behemoth is at least one spectacular action set-piece too long. Probably the final one, which races on and on and on.

Something important also has been lost, since this series debuted in 2001. Back then, the stunt driving was awesome, the gear-shifting thrills delivering plenty of accelerated excitement. But the newer films — and particularly this one — make it difficult to admire the efforts of stunt director Spiro Razatos.

It’s patently obvious that all the vehicular skirmishes have been sweetened (or perhaps fabricated entirely) by CGI wizards. The spectacle feels no more real than the outer space battles in the Star Wars franchise. Granted, the result remains suspenseful ... but it’s a lot more fun to be impressed by golly-gee-wow stunt drivers, than by a gaggle of artists hunched over computer keyboards.

The adrenaline-laden thrill has been lost.

As has some of this series’ humanity. As several characters in this new film repeatedly remind us, the most important thing — the only important thing — is family. That means characters interacting with each other, at something beyond a superficial level. The banter may be droll in Chris Morgan’s script, but Gray too frequently cuts away from potential emotion, in order to showcase yet another vehicular chase or smack-down fist fight.

The one exception is poor Dominic (Dom) Toretto, who gets put through the wringer this time. To the credit of star Vin Diesel, we definitely feel the guy’s anguish; even within his limited acting range, he’s adept at quiet despair and seething, barely repressed fury.

Spy: Should have been kept under cover

Spy (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for violence, gore, fleeting graphic nudity, and relentless profanity and coarse dialogue
By Derrick Bang 

Only in Hollywood could somebody get paid big bucks to write this sort of puerile swill.

Only in Hollywood could several levels of (presumably) savvy studio execs have seen any merit in this limp-noodle secret agent spoof.

With another mission behind them, debonair CIA agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law) and his
desk-bound handler, Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy), enjoy a celebratory dinner. Alas,
Bradley has no idea how much his colleague secretly pines for him ... even thought her
overtures couldn't be more obvious.

Only in Hollywood could a reasonably talented comedian have been “promoted” from successful supporting status, and stuffed into a string of starring roles, where she flails helplessly.

Only in Hollywood would such an individual keep getting additional shots in the barrel, abusing her fans with junk such as Identity Thief and Tammy.

And, just to spread the blame evenly, only in America would such fans continue to reward her efforts by buying tickets. An overall U.S. gross of $84.4 million for Tammy? $134.4 million for Identity Thief?

Seriously?

I guess H.L. Mencken’s 1926 observation remains even truer today: No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

Or, to quote Walt Kelly’s comic strip character Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Melissa McCarthy has been a valued member of ensemble productions such as Bridesmaids and television’s Gilmore Girls. She and Billy Gardell continue to be a great team on television’s Mike & Molly. She was refreshingly sympathetic in a straight supporting part, in last year’s St. Vincent.

But a little of McCarthy goes a very long way, which is why she’s best used in measured, intermittent doses. When forced to carry an entire film, her extremely narrow acting range becomes glaringly visible; she huffs and puffs from one scene to the next, angrily spitting out her lines, as if daring us to find her anything less than hilarious.

So okay, Melissa; I took that dare a few films back, and I’ll take it anew. You’re still not funny. Your go-to movie persona has become a mean-spirited, potty-mouthed shrike. Your recent work isn’t merely un-funny; it’s sad and pathetic. I cannot imagine why you don’t demand better material, but hey: As long as the money keeps rolling in, I guess it doesn’t matter, right?

Granted, you’re not wholly at fault in this case. Most of the blame for this new film belongs to writer/director Paul Feig, who apparently did this work all by his widdle self. I’m sure he spent at least 15 minutes concocting this twaddle. Strip away the profanity from every character’s lines, remove the juvenile vulgar humor — the sort of coarse one-upsmanship exchanged by 12-year-old boys while surfing for porn behind closed bedroom doors — and we’d be left with a mostly silent movie.

Which would have been a vast improvement.

Furious 7: Impressively audacious

Furious 7 (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.3.15

Somewhere along the way, a modest, inner-city street-racing flick morphed into a turbo-charged, gleefully preposterous Mission: Impossible wannabe.

But with results this entertaining, it’s hard to complain. Even when things get silly.

A shadowy U.S. government agent (Kurt Russell, right) makes Brian (Paul Walker, left) and
Dominic (Vin Diesel) an offer they can't refuse: Retrieve a kidnapped computer hacker, and
in return gain access to information that will allow them to target the vengeful maniac who
keeps trying to kill them.

And rest assured: Things get very, very silly. This is a movie for folks who found the action sequences in 2010’s big-screen version of The A-Team too restrained. (Steering and “flying” a parachuting tank by shooting the big gun, anyone?)

Rarely have I seen so many laws of physics ignored, circumvented and utterly ruptured.

Rarely have so many human bodies demonstrated Superman-level invulnerability.

Rarely has a bad guy taken such a lickin’, only to keep on tickin’.

Rarely have I been less bothered.

But let’s establish our parameters. Furious 7 — newest, biggest and baddest in the surprise franchise built from 2001’s The Fast and the Furious — is by no means classic filmmaking. It’s a live-action Warner Bros. cartoon, with heroes and villains alike remaining as unscathed as the Road Runner’s Coyote, after one of his plunges to a canyon floor, miles below.

We’re talking Guilty Pleasure here, with heavy emphasis on the guilty. But it’s also a pleasure, because there’s no denying director James Wan’s ability to deliver one helluva great ride.

Wan’s predecessor, Justin Lin, reinvigorated the franchise with 2009’s fourth entry, then blasted things into action-flick immortality with his next two chapters. But Wan deserves equal credit for maintaining the momentum and giving us exactly what is expected: audaciously giddy action sequences, ferocious mano a mano fight scenes, and plenty of time with the characters we’ve grown to know and love.

Because yes: This series’ cast is its primo selling point. The brotherly bond between Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) remains paramount, their mutual respect oddly poignant even during circumstances as absurd as these. Dom’s puppy-dog devotion to tough-as-nails Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is equally touching, despite the soap-opera contrivance of the amnesia that has stricken her memory of their shared love.

Comparative newcomer Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs — who entered the franchise with installment five — grants the team a thin veneer of respectability, with his DDS credentials. On top of which, the oh-so-perfect pairing of Diesel and Johnson is irresistible; they must spend all their time, between scenes, comparing pecs and biceps.

Nor should we overlook the comedy tag-team pairing of Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), both adept at the verbal comedy relief ... while also reminding us (as if that were necessary) that none of these events are to be taken too seriously.