Tag Archives: F

A WORKING MAN

Producers: Chris Long, Jason Statham, John Friedberg, David Ayer, Sylvester Stallone, Bill Block and Kevin King Templeton   Director: David Ayer   Screenplay: Sylvester Stallone and David Ayer   Cast: Jason Statham, David Harbour, Michael Peña, Arianna Rivas, Jason Flemyng, Emmett J. Scanlan, Eve Mauro, Maximilian Osinski, Andrej Kaminsky, Greg Kolpakchi, Piotr Witkowski, Isla Gie, Chidi Ajufo, Cokie Falco, Richard Heap, Merab Ninidze, Kenneth Collard, Noemi Gonzalez, Max Croes, Ricky Champ, Alana Boden, David Witts, Kristina Poli and Joanna DeLane       Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios

Grade: F

You might like to believe that the grotesquely violent, incredibly stupid “A Working Man” is intended as a spoof of the whole rotten action movie genre, but despite its parade of weird characters wearing even weirder costumes (designed by one Tiziana Corvisieri in one of the movie’s few stabs at originality), that doesn’t seem to be the case.  It may have been written, at least in part, by Sylvester Stallone, after Chuck Dixon’s 2014 novel “Levon’s Trade,” and it could be imagined as a homage to the Liam Neeson “Taken” series, but it’s actually just another brutal Jason Statham movie, though one squared, mathematically speaking, in terms of illogic and gruesomeness.

Statham, as stone-faced as ever, is Levon Cade, an ex-Royal Marine now working as a construction foreman for the Chicago firm of Joe Garcia (Michael Peña), whose wife Carla (Noemi Gonzalez) and college-age daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) help out in the office.  (The locale couldn’t look less like Chicago.  The movie was shot in England, and slapping an occasional random insert of the Chicago River and the L into the footage doesn’t make it any more convincing.)

Cade is a troubled guy, a widower living out of his car.  His father-in-law Dr. Roth (Richard Heap), who blames Levon for his wife’s suicide and has primary custody of his daughter Merry (Isla Gie)—despite his own strange garb and habits—says his son-in-law is prone to violence and is suing to end his unsupervised visits with the girl, who obviously idolizes him (cue the violins).  Levon’s lawyers tell him that Roth has a good chance of winning, given Cade’s military past and unsettled emotional state.

They have a point.  When a bunch of thugs attacks one of Cade’s crew, he demolishes them and sends them packing.  Nothing more comes of that, but Jenny has witnessed his fighting skills.

Soon after she goes partying at a sleazy bar with friends to celebrate the end of the semester and is drugged by the bartender (David Witts) and kidnapped.  The Garcias beg Cade to rescue her, but he initially refuses, worrying about giving in to his violent side.  He relents, however, and goes to his old army buddy, blind Gunny Lefferty (David Harbour), for help, including access to the reclusive fellow’s well-stocked armory, an obligatory element in such flicks as this.  (Oddly enough, Lefferty is American, as are all of Cade’s military pals.  Why such wacko off-the-grid types are always depicted with heroic auras, as Gunny, complete with an adoring wife played by Joanna DeLane, is here, is a question for someone else to consider.)                 

Anyway, Cade begins at the bar when Jenny disappeared, and waterboards the bartender to extract the name of Wolo Kolisnyk (Jason Flemyng), a member, we will eventually learn, of a Russian mob called The Brotherhood, from him.  After killing two dudes who come to visit the bartender and offhandedly shoot their associate, he tracks down Kolisnyk, tortures him and drowns him in his own swimming pool.

It would be tedious, and frankly close to impossible, to explain the further stages of Cade’s search and how one leads to the next.  One takes him to a saloon supposedly in Joliet (although it looks like a Louisiana biker bar miraculously plopped into northern Illinois, complete with drawling patrons and a security guy, named Dougie and played by Cokie Falco, who dresses like a cowboy).  There he poses as a drug dealer and strikes a deal with its proprietor Dutch (Chidi Ajufo) for an introduction to Kolisnyk’s son Dimi (Maximilian Osinski), a wayward member of The Brotherhood who wears what looks like a glam pink suit straight out of the 1970s London fashion scene. 

That connection somehow involves him with the upper echelons of The Brotherhood, embodied in Symon Kharchenko (Andrej Kaminsky), a vampiric-looking fellow who wears a black half-coat with a wide black belt and a bowler hat, and carries a cane with a silver head, and his more ordinary-looking brother Yuri (Merab Ninidze).  Symon’s muscle consists of his two doofus sons Danya (Greg Kolpakchi) and Vanko (Piotr Witkowski), clothed for some reason in shiny pastel tracksuits, one blue and the other orange, with matching caps, that represent the ultimate in anti-camouflage outerwear.

Cade regularly exhibits the expertise Statham has demonstrated in all his movies of dispatching hordes of baddies to their permanent fates.  He punches, throttles, shoots and impales scads of villains in various encounters (including Danya and Vanko, whom he disposes of even when they’ve got him tied up in a van) on his way to locating Jenny in an isolated farmhouse, where kidnappers Viper (Emmett J. Scanlan) and Artemis (Eve Mauro) have chained her to the ceiling to await their buyer, Mr. Broward (Kenneth Collard, who looks like a dissipated Dom DeLuise).  (Apparently they provide victims conforming to a purchaser’s specific requirements, like thieves who steal the particular vehicles somebody wants.)

Naturally Cade arrives in the nick of time, shoots Broward and smashes Viper to bits, while Jenny shows her dexterity by getting Artemis in a neck hold with her legs while still dangling from the ceiling and strangles her to death.  (The girl’s other talent lies in her piano playing, which seems to consist of playing Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata at an absurdly slow, clunky tempo.}  Our hero completes his campaign against villainy by smoothly terminating everybody else at the place, including Dutch and all his motorcycle gangsters, as well as Brotherhood gunmen Karp (Max Croes), a maniacally grinning specimen, and Nestor (Ricky Champ), a bald-headed brute, despite the fact that they’re spraying the place with their automatic rifles while he’s armed only with a special Lefferty shotgun and a few grenades.  But then a Statham hero can always be counted on to defeat multiple attackers single-handedly and avoid getting even a scratch from hails of gunfire.  He is, in effect, a superhero without a cape.  You’ll be happy to know that a couple of corrupt cops get their just deserts too, though not at his hand.

This is an extremely ugly film, in terms of both its potboiler treatment of sex trafficking and its extraordinary volume of violence.  It’s also a menace to the moviegoing public, since it leaves two major Brotherhood figures alive, and Dixon’s novel is just one in a twelve-book series; sequels might be forthcoming.

It’s also an ugly movie visually, with a shabby production design (Nigel Evans) and murky cinematography (Shawn White) that, combined with chaotic action choreography by director David Ayer and his team and the jerky editing by Fred Raskin, leaves the fight-and-firepower sequences a bloody mess.  Among the cast the supporting turns range from barely adequate to grossly amateurish, but then the villains are meant to be caricatures and Cade’s friends and family pallid sketches.  Exceptions are Rivas, who shows some spunk, and Gie, who’s sickeningly sweet.  

Near the close of “A Working Man,” Jenny surveys the wreckage of the place where she’d been held captive and defiantly raises two middle fingers.  Perceptive viewers may feel that the gesture is actually directed by the filmmakers at them.

UNFROSTED

Producers: Jerry Seinfeld, Spike Feresten and Beau Bauman  Director: Jerry Seinfeld   Screenplay: Jerry Seinfeld, Spike Feresten, Andy Robin and Barry Marder   Cast: Jerry Seinfeld, Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Max Greenfield, Hugh Grant, Amy Schumer, Peter Dinklage, Christian Slater, Bill Burr, Dan Levy, James Marsden, Jack McBrayer, Thomas Lennon, Bobby Moynihan, Adrian Martinez, Sarah Cooper, Mikey Day, Kyle Mooney, Drew Tarver, Tony Hale, Felix Solis, Maria Bakalova, Dean Norris, Kyle Dunnigan, Sebastian Maniscalco, Beck Bennett, Cedric the Entertainer, Fred Armisen, John Slattery, Jon Hamm, Aparna Nancherla, Andy Daly, Sarah Burns, Eleanor Sweeney, Bailey Sheetz, Rachael Harris and Isaac Bae   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: F

Question: What do you call a ninety-minute comedy that consists of nothing but a succession of groaners?  Answer: “Unfrosted.”

The Jerry Seinfeld opus—he directed, co-wrote and stars in it—is the latest in the recent series of movies about the invention of some product, like Air Jordans or Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.  Theoretically it deals with the 1963 introduction of Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts, though its flirtations with history are few and fleeting.  But it does share some qualities with the subject: it’s flat, flavorless and nutrition-free (in this case, comedically), replete with lazy period references that might pique some viewers’ nostalgia buttons.

Seinfeld plays Bob Cabana, a Kellogg’s executive who, in a bookending device, tells the story to a runaway kid (Isaac Bae) at a diner.  In 1963, his company and its great Battle Creek, Michigan cereal rival Post were competing to invent a new kind of toaster-ready breakfast product that would contain a gooey fruit filling in a pastry shell and have a long shelf life.  On learning that Post, owned by Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer) was ahead in the race—as a result of spying on Kellogg’s—he prodded his boss Edsel (Jim Gaffigan) into going into emergency mode.

That means assembling a team of supposedly savvy innovators.  They include Cabana’s former partner at the firm, Donna Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy), who moved on to NASA; ice cream mogul Tom Carvel (Adrian Martinez); Chef Boy Ardee (Bobby Moynihan); premier huckster Harold von Braunhut (Thomas Lennon); bike impresario Steve Schwinn (Jack McBrayer); physical fitness icon Jack LaLanne (James Marsden); and IBM’s UNIVAC computer.  Among other things their work results in an animated ravioli and a toaster explosion that carries off one of them, leading to a purportedly funny but jaw-droppingly awful funeral service presided over by the Quaker Oats Man (Andy Daly) with the help of Rice Krispies spokes-figures Snap (Kyle Mooney), Crackle (Mikey Day) and Pop (Drew Tarver) and other cereal mascots, most notably Tony the Tiger (Hugh Grant).

Grant’s playing Thurl Ravenscroft, the actor/voiceover artist, here presented as a preening Shakespearean wannabe; incensed over being unappreciated, he leads the various mascots in a strike against Kellogg’s that ultimately results in an assault on the company headquarters that comes across as a tinny joke about the January 6 insurrection.  It’s not just tasteless but badly staged, and even Grant, revisiting the egotistical thespian persona he did so well in “Paddington 2,” can make the subplot work.

But there’s more spurious hilarity here, in the form of a thuggish milk union headed by Harry Friendly (Peter Dinklage, at the menacing worst) that employs a sinister milkman (Christian Slater, relying on his trademark creepy smile), and a sugar cartel overseen by a chieftain nicknamed El Sucre (Felix Solis) in a parody of drug dealing that yields nary a chuckle.  Both bits are also as tasteless as the mascot riot, are is the introduction of John Kennedy (Bill Burr) and Nikita Khrushchev (Dean Norris) as politicians dragged into the Kellogg’s-Post battle.  The scenes involving both end with a sniggering sexual element that’s—just guessed it—tasteless in the extreme.  There are also excruciating inserts portraying Walter Cronkite (Kyle Dunnigan, who does a much better Johnny Carson) as a bumbling, oversexed dimwit.

It’s hard to imagine anybody thinking this sub-Borscht Belt material to be worthy of their time (watching the last-act dithering over the product’s name, you might be reminded of Pauline Kael’s remark after watching the original version of “Heaven’s Gate”—she said that she had no trouble determining what to cut, but when she tried to think of what to keep, her mind went blank).  Yet somehow Seinfeld managed to attract not only all those mentioned above—but others, like Cedric the Entertainer (as an awards show MC), and Jon Hamm and Richard Slattery (as PR guys) and Fred Armisen, to show up for cameos.  (Larry David is conspicuous by his absence; perhaps his Spidey sense was tingling.)  There are a few participants who survive the catastrophe—Eleanor Sweeney and Bailey Sheetz, as a couple of dumpster-diving kids, and Sarah Burns who, as Mrs. Schwinn, projects the incredulity at the funeral shenanigans that we, as viewers, also must feel.  The rest, including Max Greenfield as Marjorie’s put-upon lackey, engage in the sort of desperate mugging that indicates they knew the task was hopeless.  Meanwhile Seinfeld struts through the movie with his usual air of benign befuddlement, seemingly unaware of what he’s wrought.

“Unfrosted” has the phony technical gloss of a TV sitcom, thanks to Clayton Hartley’s garish production design and Susan Matheson’s equally bright costumes, the glare captured in William Pope’s cinematography.  Christophe Peck’s predictably perky score grates, while Evan Henke’s lazy editing mirrors Seinfeld’s poorly-paced direction.

What’s lacking in the technical department is what the material sorely needs: an old-fashioned laugh-track.  Not that it would have helped, but at least it would have indicated that the movie was supposed to be funny.