Brett Garten, Movie Extraordinare
Cinematic Sommelier
6.9
If you liked “The Hangover” trilogy or “Girls’ Night Out,” you’ll like this one. The cast is perfection, and the third act will pack much more of a punch than your expecting. You won’t see the shedding a tear from heartfelt closure coming from this one.
8.1
He did it again! Denzel and crew stuck the landing and nailed the conclusion of the trilogy. This time with the additional impact of a reunion with Dakota Fanning, a chemistry you can feel permeate the story and provide a strong heart to the story that I was afraid would be missing in this one without the usual supporting cast, following the events of Part 2. They haven’t lost a beat since “Man on Fire.”
You won’t find better choreography and kill count outside of “John Wick,” with only “Nobody” giving them a run for their money.
I found this film to have a return to form and a softer touch than 2. There was no lack of bloodshed, but moments between Fanning and Washington, paired with attention to detail like the score paying homage to Nina Rota’s “Godfather” theme to fit the Italian locale… I appreciated the well rounded nature of this stuck landing. Incredibly well done and well worth a watch!
7.2
I could feel it trying to be “Taken” or “Sicario.”
It’s a solid action flick with the added impact of being based on a true story that Hollywood took some license with. Lucky for this particular story, I will watch anything that Jim Caviezel is in. The action and characters are really well done, and everything under the hood is firing on all cylinders.
Addressing the “controversy”: I rarely, if ever watch the news. Especially cable news. I had no idea the hair on fire this one was causing when I saw it. Aside from a sprinkling in of “saving God’s children” in the third act and the marketing campaign being based on an “us versus the world” narrative… they really made a mountain out of a molehill here. The irony of the guy blogging about movies on the internet having to tell people – stop taking movies so seriously. And no shit a movie’s going to have a rough time getting a theatrical release without a distributor. It’s the downside of the studio system, and one of the beauties of the internet and the proliferation of smaller studios, distributors, and theater chains/individual theaters.
6.8
Everyone and everything here is indecisive, which is sadly the hallmark of a Disney creature. A great premise with a great deal of promise that sadly falls flat in the end. In trying to be everything, in the end it becomes mostly nothing. In a word, generic. Or safe. And that’s not what we come to the movies for. In the wise words of Nicole Kidman, “we come to this place for magic.” The magic has been successfully milked from this franchise by the mouse.
8.1
For a three-hour runtime, this adrenaline soaked fever dream flies by. It may be much of the same, cranked up another notch to top the last film, but it’s executed to perfection. Cruise may in fact perish in pursuit of his next blockbuster, but there’s no one better in the business of popcorn selling, theater packing summer blockbusters that anyone can enjoy. The panache of Christopher Nolan without the headache from overworking your frontal cortex to keep a grip on the unfolding narrative. Like “Oppenheimer,” this was born for IMAX.
Important Note – I greatly appreciated the structure of this film, especially as a Part 1 of 2. It completed the arc, while also setting up the finale in the next chapter. It didn’t leave me feeling let down and immediately needing the part 2 in order to not feel cheated like the “Hobbit” franchise or “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.”
Brett Garten, Movie Extraordinare 