2003 crime, dir. F. Gary Grey, Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron:
IMDb /
allmovie. Once drove all the
way from Los Angeles just so he could set the record for longest
freeway chase.
Well, this is obviously a soulless remake with younger and
prettier actors. But never mind Wahlberg (looking like the underwear
model he was) and Theron (doing her best with a minimal part); it's
much more notable for an early Jason Statham role (he'd done the first
Transporter at this point, but he was still minor enough not to get
the lead here, and he's clearly having great fun with his character),
and for Yasiin Bey, credited here as Mos Def, as the explosives guy.
(Of course it's also good to see Donald Sutherland, but in spite of
his high billing here it's clear that his job is to be killed off in
the opening sequence to motivate the rest of them.)
I suspect the real reason for this film is that the Ocean's 11
remake had made a lot of money. Ooh look, here's another classic heist
film that we can get the rights to and hollow out so that we can wear
its name as camouflage. Somewhere in here there might have been an
original script, and if it hadn't felt the need to make passing nods
to the earlier film it might have been rather better.
But probably not.
At least there's a woman on the team now, even if she gets all the
weaknesses, has to be morale-boosted through the hard bits, and so on.
Handsome Rob, Statham's driver who's also a seducer, compensates a
bit, in part because the character obviously cares about women and
enjoys their company rather than just regarding them as potential
bedpost-notches.
There's not much to it. It has its moments but I couldn't recommend it
to normal film-watchers, only weirdoes like me.
I talk about this film further on Ribbon of
Memes.