Is 'The Underdoggs' Streaming on Netflix or Prime Video? Stream It Or Skip It: 'Kevin James: Irregardless' On Prime Video, Where The Comedian Wishes He Could Parent His Kids As His Parented Him Margot Robbie's 'Barbie' Oscar Snub Isn't Anti-Woman - It's Because The Academy Remains Anti-Comedy Stream It Or Skip It: 'You Hurt My Feelings' on VOD, an Inspired Comedy Collab Between Nicole Holofcener and Julia Louis-Dreyfus Here’s Why Mel Gibson Is Not in ‘Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget’ 'Moana' Star Auli'i Cravalho Says It's "Really Important" That Disney Finds Someone Else To Star In Their Live-Action Remake: Here's Why Writer On Scrapped 'Lizzie McGuire' Reboot Reveals Proposed Hookup Plotline "Disney Wasn't Comfortable With" Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Migration’ on VOD, a Perfectly Fine Talking-Duck Road-Comedy Cartoon Stream It or Skip It: 'Doctor Who Holiday Special: The Church on Ruby Road' on Disney+, in Which Ncuti Gatwa Has A Delightful Debut as the Fifteenth Doctor Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Holdovers’ on Peacock, a Would-be Future Classic Christmas Dramedy from Alexander Payneĭonald Trump Says Producers Begged Him To Make A Cameo In 'Home Alone 2' - Even Though Director Claims He Bullied His Way Into The Movie In his fight with Jaka he gives a short, slightly cliched speech about preferring fistfights to gunplay, but when he draws out the fight after he's already won, before finally snapping the man's neck it says a lot more through action than he said with his words, and in his fight with Rama and Andi where he makes a conscious decision to turn a one-on-one fight into two-on-one against him, we understand that it's not just a stupid contrivance to make a more interesting fight (which is what it is on its most basic storytelling level,) but rather a logical extension of his character's need to be the strongest, biggest badass in the room.įor me, little things like that elevate it from being a plotless circus act to being a great film that happens to feature a lot of people beating the shit out of one another.'Home Alone' Actor Devin Ratray's Domestic Violence Trial Delayed After Recent "Critical" Hospitalization Mad Dog is similarly strongy characterized as being pretty much pure evil, but also a lover of very personal killing. He's not a guy that enjoys taking the lives of others, which informs his actions in other fights. Then after a particularly brutal heat-of-the-moment killing of an opponent involving a door frame, there's a couple second pause of Rama looking horrified by his own actions. Our protagonist Rama is presented in a short montage of him working out in the morning, but also readying himself spiritually by praying, and saying goodbye to his family. A lot of his best scenes have tension because of that same device-particularly the Landa scenes in Inglourious Basterds.īut also the way Gareth Evans sets up his characters at least as much through action as dialog made me really admire this film. In particular, the scene where Andi and Mad Dog come back up to Tama's office, and there's an exchange between Andi and Tama where both men are keeping their knowledge of the same secret from one another, and the audience isn't sure if Tama is aware of Andi's betrayal that plays out sort of like something Tarantino would write. They're not necessarily spectacularly multifaceted or anything, but they have clear motivations in a scene and it leads to some of the dialog-driven scenes being among the best in the film. While it is true the film doesn't have a complicated plot-SWAT team invades drug-lord's HQ on a bogus pretense of lawfulness ordered by a corrupt lieutenant, one member of the team has his own personal mission the bring his brother home-it does have some really well-drawn characters. When I first came out of the theater where I watched it and called a couple of my friends to rave about it, I used the words "ten minutes of dialog and eighty of the most brutal, gorgeous fight scenes I've ever seen," but when it came out on blu-ray this week and I watched it a few times, there's really quite a bit of dialog, or character-building non-action scenes.
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