Reviews

To be honest, I wasn't really expecting much from this. The trailer made it out to be a poor Tarantino rip off, and I haven't exactly been blown away by Tom DiCillo's output in the past. However, all in all, it wasn't half bad. I thought the main plot line of Dennis Leary being made a public laughing stock was handled well. There's a nice in-joke where Elizabeth Hurley over reacts at people smoking in a restaurant whilst on a date with Dennis Leary, which anal nerds like me can pat themselves on the back for spotting. Also, it's nice to see Donald Faison(Turk from 'Scrubs') make the move on to the big screen, even if it is only a small independent comedy. Maybe I just enjoyed this because it's been so long since I've seen a good American comedy in the cinema, or maybe because I was expecting it to fall flat in it's face. And sure, it's not perfect. Hurley is as wooden as ever. The plot involving Luis Guzman's daughter having him killed is a little unbelievable, as the daughter is given very little motivation for this. Also, I understand that Leary's character getting off on a cheerleading video is meant to be light-hearted and humorous, but I found it a little degrading. Especially when it follows a completely gratuitous and unmotivated shot of a cheerleader's pants in the opening burger bar scene.

However, these are minor grumbles and this is, on a whole, a finely executed piece of work.

This could have been awesome. And at times, it gets there. This is basically a Hong-Kong Charlie's Angels. Usually I avoid making statements like this, but it's hard not to since Charlie's Angels does seem to be a major point of reference. It is based around two young, attractive women with an expanse of gadgetry at there disposal, whose work gets in the way of their love life and who get to kick major ass. The only difference is that the women are hired assassins, rather than hired crime fighters. The film makers seem to openly acknowledge where they stole their ideas from, giving Lynn's character the codename of 'The Computer Angel'.

The plot is non-sensical, the script wooden and the characters basically huge cardboard cut-outs. But then, this is a Hong-Kong action movie after all, and the plot is really just an vague structure to link together the visually arresting action sequences. And the action sequences, on a whole, are very well executed. At times they stretch too far. They try and acheive the visual trickery of Charlie's Angels, The Matrix, Crouching Tiger et all, but, due to the smaller budget, don't always pull it off sucsessfully.

The idea of women rolling about in t-shirts and tiny shorts by day, and kicking ass by night, is either hugely empowering or deeply degrading to women everywhere, depending on which side of the fence you are on. And the plot development of the criminal and the police officer earning new respect for each other by joining forces seems to be the blueprint for all H-K action flicks.

At the end of the day, if you like your movies big, dumb and action packed, this is really good fun. It's just been done a lot better. The film does get one superlative though, gaining the title of "most blatant product placement ever".

An attempt to document the day-to-day routine of a small town American cop in a fresh, amusing and intelligent way. The problem is we have seen it all before, and we've seen it done to much better effect. Francis has been transferred from another precinct and is initially unsure of the 'unusual' way his new colleagues operate. His new partner, Morning, is a hotheaded experienced officer, prone to abuse his position by playing jokes on citizens and, at times, harassing them. So far, so unoriginal. The only thing different about the film is the pacing of the action and humour, which goes for the slow burning American indie feel. But the film never really achieves this successfully. The jokes, though paced not to be laugh out loud funny, barely raise a chuckle. The performances are consistently bad throughout the entire cast. (One particular scene where Francis (played by Bill Dawes) gets drunk is eye-gougingly bad). The obligatory musings on life, relationships and 'what it means to be a cop', are not nearly as inspired or original as the filmmakers seem to think.

It looks quite nice for a low budget indie, but there just isn't enough here to make it stand out from 150 other buddy cop films.