Catch .44: Guntastic girlies go diner heist crazy! With Bruce Willis, Forest Whitaker

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/catch44/

Catch.44

Catch .44: Guntastic girlies go diner heist crazy! The girlies in question are working for sleazeball drug lord Mel, played by Bruce Willis, who seems to be working this gig strictly for laughs. Fantastic!

Willis plays a bathrobe wearing, bourbon guzzling, douche. A Low budget crimelord Ying to Forest Whitaker’s Cop-killing, cup full of crazy, Yang.

This movie is written & directed by Aaron Harvey, the man behind such classics, (cof) as Blood Island and Evil Woods, a man who was 14 years old when Willis starred in the Tarantino classic Pulp Fiction. Unsurprising then that the Quentin cues come thick and fast. But so what, give the kid a chance already!

Crimezine likes the cut of young Aaron’s Jib, almost as much as we like pulp crime sleaze. It goes with out saying if you want Oscar winning characterization you should check out the latest Meryl Streep movie. But if you enjoy classic b-movie crime at it’s dirtiest low rent best, then Catch .44 is the flick for you.

Rampart, with Woody Harrelson

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/rampart/

Rampart

There is nothing Hollyweird loves better than bastardising historical events. Take Rampart for example. But first the historical context.

Rampart is a street, it is a neighborhood, it is a police district, It was also a scandal  in the 1990’s when widespread corruption was discovered in Los Angeles Police Department’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums team.(CRASH).

Officers from Rampart Division CRASH were implicated in widespread corruption, which included unprovoked shootings, beatings, drug dealing, and a wide raft of other crimes, including perjury and the covering up of evidence. More than 70 officers were implicated and three of those were found to be in the direct employ of Hip-Hop mogul “Suge” Knight of Death Row Records a convicted felon with ties to the infamous Bloods street gang.

The implications of the scandal were widespread. The cost to the City of Los Angeles $125 million in settlements.

Fast forward to the present day, and the Hollywood take on Rampart written by crime writing legend and Crimezine Favorite James “Devil Dog” Ellroy and Oren Moverman. The movie focuses on the Harrelson Character, an LAPD officer nicknamed ‘date rape’  who is investigated by Internal Affairs for the extra judicial killing of a serial rapist. The movie examines the officers disintegrating family life, including his ex’s played by Cynthia Nixon &  Anne Heche, and his children, particularly his elder daughter played by Brie Larson.

So rather than a blow by blow break down of the actual Rampart scandal, we get a movie that focuses on the family and the emotional vacuity of a damaged individual. Nothing wrong with that, in fact it is commendable that Moverman had the creative vision to tackle  emotive subject matter in such an original way.

Witness Moverman’s previous film with Harrelson 2009’s The Messanger to realise emotive is what he does best.

But please, give Crimeziners some credit Mr M. if we buy a steak dinner, we expect Meat Potatoes and Gravy. We do not expect it to contain 90% vegetables. In a similar way if we buy a film called Rampart, that purports to contain Devil Dog in the ingredients, we expect Verismilitude  and bad cops doing bad things like only bad cops can do, you dig?

Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, the Star Trek Connection

http://www.missionimpossible.com/?gclid=CNL7g-2MxqwCFQVlhwodg08QrQ

http://www.missionimpossible.com/?gclid=CMKtu9OMxqwCFQmAhwoda0XHpQ

http://www.missionimpossible.com/?gclid=COugrJ6MxqwCFQJ8hwodj22Hrw

Window cleaner impossible

In the absence of Bond and Bourne this holiday season, there is only game in town and your mission should you choose to accept it, is another installment of the Mission Impossible franchise. Cool. Crimezine loves big explosions, full-auto firefights and Lilliputian Luvvie Tom Cruise, dangling on bits of string.

Imagine the Hollywood focus group now, regarding the exact size of the explosions, the number of  fire-fights, and the length of string needed to swing the fetchingly coiffed Mr Cruise around the screen for another ninety minutes of high-camp super-spook buffoonery.

The boys in the boardroom thought long and hard you can tell. We are talking a million dollars in Starbucks and Donuts alone to figure this puppy out, and here is what they came up with: Big explosion—The Kremlin, Tom gets dangled off the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, so lots of string needed, and as for the firefights? Virtually every scene, except when Tom is being dangled, or the gunplay might detract from the size of the explosions.

Ghost Protocol is the fourth Mission Impossible film—great name for a video game incidentally. Coincidence? We leave that to the conscience of the individual Crimeziner.

The plot concerns a US Black Ops attempt, known as the Ghost Protocol, to find out who blew up the Kremlin. Ethan Hunt and his team are charged with finding the answers, outside of their agencies command structure. Essentially disavowed, Hunt an his pals are on their own!

Consider the ante well and truly-upped.

Mission Impossible is Hollywood at it’s silliest and most formulaeic. That formula is pretty darn good however, and you would have to have a hard heart not to enjoy this film in the spirit in which it is intended, entertainment in it’s purest form.

And the Star Trek Connection? Leonard Nimoy (Mr Spock) starred as Paris in the original 1970’s Mission Impossible series. And for you noir fiends out there Nimoy also appeared in two 1954 episodes of Dragnet. So there!