masonfisk

A current thriller starring Oscar winner Rami Malek playing in theaters. Malek is a milquetoasty CIA operative who works behind the desk as an analyst when he gets the worst news ever when his wife, Rachel Brosnahan, is killed during a botched robbery in Blighty. Distraught & grief stricken, he offers his services to his higher-ups, one played by Holt McCallany, to find the players involved which they laugh away but when Malek uncovers some of McCallany's backdoor shenanigans (even having ties to the culprits since he used them in other ops) he's pressured to let Malek undergo some combat training, under the guide of Oscar nominee Laurence Fishburne, who after some time w/him realizes Malek is not up to snuff. Being untrained be damned Malek figures as he gleans what little he's learned coupled w/his tech savvy to track the four participants down one by one taking them out in calculating fashion. While McCallany sends his minions to find the evidence Malek has hidden on him, Fishburne is sent out to quell Malek who manages to find his contact in Europe, the wife of a murdered Russian spy, played by Outlander's Caitriona Balfe, to aid in his bloody quest. Based on a book by Robert Littell (which was made into a film back in 1981 starring The Deer Hunter's John Savage & which also has shades of a recent movie called American Assassin from 2017 starring Dylan O'Brien) the film is a nice antidote to all the recent bomb & blast spy actioners (The Grey Man & The Citadel series come to mind) which favors smarts over bombast (one of the bad guys is pretty much blown up offscreen) which ultimately makes for a refreshing viewing w/Malek's down to earth hero vital to the success of this film.

A current Die Hard clone thriller starring Oscar winner Viola Davis currently streaming on Prime. Davis is the president of the USA (of course she is!) who like Harrison Ford's commander-in-chief in 1997's Air Force One is a former military person whose service elevated her to the position she now holds. Davis along w/her family, which includes hubby Anthony Anderson, head to South Africa for the titular conference which is upset by the antics of Antony Starr's disgraced Aussie merc who hopes to disrupt the status quo in order to bolster his cryptocurrency account (numbering in the billions) as he holds all the heads of state of different countries under locked gun & key. Not bringing much to the enterprise (even the notion of poor Davis running around in sneakers was lifted from Jamie Foxx's presidential turn in White House Down) makes this a quick & easy albeit uninspired watch which gets the job done but come on when there was a recent series on streaming based on the Olympus has Fallen films, you really need to remake the wheel if you're going to gather Oscar caliber talent & make something so pedestrian the viewing public might as well watch this while they're surfing on their phones.

A horror film from last year. Taking place on the Emerald Isle, we have a tale of a pair of twins (both played by Carolyn Bracken) where one gets killed during the film's opening salvo (sister one is an artist who lives in an isolated estate who is pestered one night by a vagrant claiming someone is in the house w/her). Time passes. The husband of the victim, Gwilym Lee, a doctor at a nearby sanitarium, goes to visit sister two, who's blind & runs a curio shop, to commiserate about their loss. They agree for an upcoming visit where Bracken meets Lee's new girlfriend, Caroline Menton. Bracken, who has designs on ESP tendencies, augurs Lee was behind the killing (which when we meet a co-worker at Lee's workplace he admits to doing the deed on Lee's behalf) which prompts Lee to solve his dilemma by leaving an attic passage open for her to fall through but not before Bracken has moved some of her belongings into the space, including a wooden golem which figures more into Lee's fate than he realizes. Very creepy & unnerving w/a command of space (the empty manse is a character unto itself) which adds to the dread (you almost feel bad for Lee since we know what's coming) adding up to a very in control thriller of the worse possibilities.