Tag Archives: Sharlto Copley

Heads of State – Movie Review

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TL;DR – I was honestly surprised about how much I liked this film, John Cena and Idris Elba are a blast, the action scenes are solid, and it makes a couple of solid points with its story.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Prime Video service that viewed this film.

John Cena and Idris Elba hold hands.

Heads of State Review –

There has been an interesting trend in action films recently. Back in the 1990s, it was common for the US President to be an action star, think Air Force One or Independence Day. But it has been a long time since I have seen it outside of some ‘has fallen’ films. But in the last year, we have gotten Rumours, Captain America: Brave New World, and G20, to name but a few. Now we get to see what John Cena and Idris Elba do in this world of a good old-fashioned UK-USA team-up.   

So, to set the scene, we open in Buñol, Spain, as La Tomatina is in full swing, where Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) is working a case for MI6/CIA to take out Russian arms dealer Viktor Gradov (Paddy Considine). It was going well until her entire team was murdered in the street. Meanwhile, in London, embattled Prime Minister Sam Clarke (Idris Elba) is getting ready to meet US President Will Derringer (John Cena), a former action film star. After a disastrous press conference, the minders agree to diffuse the situation with the two jointly taking Air Force One to the NATO conference in Trieste. But when the plane is attacked, they are pushed out of the aircraft in parachutes; the only problem is that the attack has put them over Belarus, hostile territory.    

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Monkey Man – Movie Review

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TL;DR – An explosive and raw revenge film that leaves nothing in the tank as it explodes in a riot of action.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

Kid dressed in a monkey mask.

Monkey Man Review –

When it comes to the Revenge genre, they can be a bit hit-and-miss. You have to get the audience to sympathise with your protagonist because if they don’t, well then all that violence starts looking bad. The best example of this in the modern era, John Wick, a film which gets name-checked here, and is an excellent example of doing this right. Well, today, we might be able to add a new entry to that list.

So to set the scene, we open with a mother telling her son about the legend of Hanuman. But in the present, that boy does not have a name. He is Kid/Bobby/Monkey Man (Dev Patel) who spends a lot of time throwing cage matches for Tiger (Sharlto Copley) wearing a monkey mask. It is a brutal occupation, but it gets Kid the money to enact his plan, starting with getting into the ground floor of Queenie’s (Ashwini Kalsekar) very illegal but very popular entertainment business. Because Kid has a mission, and that is to bring pain to the people who cause his family harm.

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Beast – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It starts strong and has genuinely terrifying moments, but it does not have the legs to make it to the end.   

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

A truck drives through the South African bush.

Beast Review –

A long tradition of films can be summed up as ‘an unknowable antagonist hunts down our plucky protagonists’. If we slip into horror, this can be a slasher hunted down kids at a summer camp, dinosaurs running amok in Jurassic Park, or you could flip it, and the unstoppable force is the protagonist as in John Wick. However, one of the more popular scenarios in this realm is animals, and while sharks may have been king for a while, today’s film looks to unseat them with the big cats that roam the savannah.

So to set the scene, it is late a night as a group of poachers stalk through the bush to a trap they have set up. Letting loose a barrage of gunfire, they kill all the lions there, bar one that gets away. The next day, Nate Samuels (Idris Elba) and his daughters Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries) arrive at Mopani Game Reserve in South Africa to spend time with Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley), an old friend of Nate and his late wife. Nate is a ranger at Mopani, and in the morning, he gives the group a tour around the preserve, even in the areas the public doesn’t usually see. But when they see a man running out onto the road covered in blood and go to help, they soon realise that there is something out there in the grass coming for them.

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Movie Review – Gringo

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TL;DR – There are individual elements of Gringo that are interesting, but as a whole, the movie just doesn’t really work all that well

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Gringo. Image Credit: Amazon Studios

Review –

In some respects, Gringo is a really interesting film, because it is attempting something quite different from a narrative perspective, and it is clear that the cast is giving it their all. However, like a diver doing a front four and a half over-rotating and splashing into the pool, it just does not come together.

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