Darkness of Man Review

Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Darkness of Man" is the kind of gritty, low-rent crime thrillers they don't make anymore; where it's almost always nighttime, the sun only shining through the mostly closed blinds to awaken the alcoholic main character. Playing Russell Hatch, Van Damme drinks and smokes with class and swagger, trying to protect his ex-lover Esther's (Chika Kanamoto) kid Jayden (Emerson Min) from getting into the family business: drugs. Only the plot isn't that simple, involving the Russian mob, double-crosses, plot twists and some surprisingly gory kills, mostly at the hands of Russell. 

The narrative is labyrinthine not because it's well-written but quite the opposite- story beats are delivered awkwardly in English, Korean and Russian, characters often swapping between languages mid-scene. But it's biggest flaw is it's lack of purpose: this exists to make some money on the VOD market and to keep the Van Damme name relevant. Well, as relevant as a VOD film can keep you.

We meet Russell via a flashback, sitting impatiently at a diner, where he dismisses a waitress' inquiry on spiking his coffee, claiming he doesn't drink. Ha, his glazy eyes, five-a-clock shadow and suspiciously flask-shaped bump in his blazer pocket suggest otherwise. He's soon met by Esther, who begs him to protect her son. He agrees, though is narration disagrees, spouting doomy dialogue that probably sounds good in advertisements. They part ways, where she's soon killed, and him wounded, and well, here we are.

Living in an extended-stay motel, his neighbor Chris, an unrecognizable Spencer Breslin, sells drugs and generally acts as the film's comic relief. He's never funny really, but he's completely believable as a low-level pusher, and when he tells Russell that he uses a drone to pick up his merchandise, I totally bought it. (Sadly, we never seen it happen. Perhaps in the sequel?)

Jayden, a moody teenager who vapes and overall is not a great kid, thinks his mother was a druggie and overdosed, effectively abandoning him. Ah, kid, if only you saw the opening scene! He doesn't take kindly to Russell, referring as "his driver" to friends and teachers, but is soon approached by his uncle Dae Hyun (Peter Jae), to work with him in that forbidden family business. Remember when every cinematic villain involved vague drugs? Simpler times.

Van Damme, an actor with a screen-presence that is simultaneously distracting and interesting, remains convincing in the action scenes despite being in his sixties, my favorite being a fight filmed from within a minivan, while he takes down two thugs. (But my favorite moment is when we find out the muscles-from-Brussels has a little cat!)

Judging by all the production companies in the opening credits (I thought I counted no less than five, but the interwebs tells me it is "just" four), we can only surmise this didn't exactly cost a lot to make, but director/co-writer James Cullen Bressack keeps the action limited to just a few rainy streets, grungy back alleys and rundown buildings, and it works quite well. The (very) few larger scenes, such as a Cadillac Escalade flipping over, don't look cheesy or filled with cheap CGI; it's something that Cannon would have made in the late 80's, from economic directors like J. Lee Thompson or Joseph Zito, probably staring an aging Charles Bronson (or even a young Van Damme) as they slashed the budget with the cameras were still rolling. It's not necessarily good, but it is a skillfully made little thriller that in another time probably would have had a good trailer and awesome VHS box.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Review

Director Renny Harlin has a career far more fascinating than pretty much any film he's actually directed, and boy has he directed a lot of films; he has four scheduled for this year alone, three of which form an independent trilogy in the cult franchise "The Strangers." It begins here with "The Strangers: Chapter 1," a name only confusing unless you forget that there's actually two previous flicks, and what ever subtlety the earlier entries had is completely lost this time around. Third time is not the charm, it seems.

It's not-quite-a-reboot-but-not-a-remake, at least officially, but the same exact beats are repeated, not just from 2008's "The Strangers" and 2018's "The Strangers: Prey At Night," but by dozens of other slasher films. Tell me if you've heard this before: a few out-of-towners (Madelaine Petsch as Maya and Froy Gutierrez as her long-time boyfriend Ryan) stop by a mysterious town for a bite to eat while driving cross country, their car mysteriously breaks down, and have to spend the night in said town while it's in the mysterious shop. It's a mysterious airbnb way out in the middle of the mysterious woods, fully furnished and yes, it even mysteriously has chickens! They actually have some of the best dialogue; I believe it went something like "cluck cluck..."

Ryan has asthma but forgets his inhaler in the broken down car, so he hops on the inexplicably functional and full-of-gas motorcycle, somehow finds his way back to town to get it. Meanwhile, Maya stays back in the cabin, and though Ryan returns safely, not before hell breaks loose when a group of strange strangers arrive, mask on face, and knife and ax in hand.

Harlin, for his part, does know how to stage a shot, where woods are enveloped in a heavy mist at all times (naturally), and exercises some surprising restraint with the gore. I'm fine with that, but the actions of the characters is so illogical and stupid that the would-be tension only exist because the script has them doing illogical and stupid things. You sit on your worn leather reclining chair waiting to be scared, waiting for the audience to yelp in terror, but instead everyone slowly dies of boredom.

But it is not just the story that's banal, but also the score; there are somehow two composers, Justin Burnett and Òscar Senén, and their contributions here consists almost entirely of droning beats and silence, usually right before a sudden loud noise accompanies something equally sudden appearing onscreen. It is all just cliche, so cliche in fact that I began to notice just how uninspired it was. I usually only notice a film's score when it's really good or really bad, but this is the first time in my life I noticed it just because of how bland it is.

The screenplay, written somehow by three people(!) (Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland and Amber Loutfi), steals not just the basic premise, not just the beginning, middle and ending, but also every single problem every single other film in the genre has. A perfect example is when, because plot, Maya and Ryan find a working car and try to escape. So far, so logical. But uh oh, these cloaked bad guys also have a working vehicle, and smash into theirs. You might have asked yourself, why didn't they IMMEDIATELY drive off? I don't have an answer, but then again, I doubt the screenwriters had one either. Anyway, Ryan is trapped, and has Maya leave him and run into the woods while he picks up his gun and begins blasting away. Only the hooded villain is able to quickly escape the blast by exiting their vehicle, leaving the keys inside. You can of course, surmise that neither of our heroes didn't think to, you know, drive away it in it. Someone get me a thesaurus, because I'm running out of ways to say "dumb."

It's as if all the characters exist in a vacuum and their only option is to react to any threat by running away, instead of using their heads.

Oh, you might be thinking, that's just one scene, that perhaps the entire film can't be filled with moronic moments that like, but you would be wrong. How wrong? Well.. characters not calling the police when they should; when they do make that belated call, the reception is bad; protagonists don't shoot antagonists when their shotgun is aimed square in their face; people split up (multiple times); everyone but the bad guys trips, falls or otherwise hurts themselves; hero has a chronic illness; hero forgets inhaler; hero later drops inhaler; heroine thinks someone is in the house, so she drinks; and when heroine still thinks someone is in the house, so she smokes weed. I hating writing that as much as I hated seeing the film itself.

The immature teenager in me wanted some violent bloodshed, hell I would have settled for gratuitous nudity, but no. Despite its R rating for, I dunno, some bad language and tame pools of blood, this is an exploitation picture without the exploitation. I wouldn't mind "The Strangers: Chapter 1" so much if it weren't so offensively dull. Usually you just want your work to be memorable, not memorably forgettable.

Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver Review

If the first "Rebel Moon" film was director and co-writer Zack Snyder's blatant attempt at making his own "Star Wars," then its sequel (dubbed the very loquacious "Part Two: The Scargiver") is his "The Empire Strikes Back," a film arguably twice as good as its predecessor. That's true here as well, but sorry Zack, you know what two times zero is...

That may be an exaggeration, but that still means his follow-up gets literally just one star.

The interwebs tells me both films were shot back-to-back, which is unfortunate because Mr. Director learns absolutely nothing from his first go about; "Part Two" suffers from all the same shortcomings, and again, the most offensive is the fetishistic obsession with slow motion. This time around we get slow motion crown falling, slow motion people falling, slow motion people dying, slow motion people yelling, slow motion grain harvesting, slow motion romantic gazing, slow motion birds flying, slow motion water canteen filling, slow motion fade to black, slow motion people posing, slow motion self-arm amputation, slow motion people pouting, and slow motion suicide, along with the returning slow motion walking, slow motion shooting, slow motion explosions, and slow motion hand-to-hand combat. If that was hard to read, just imagine having to watch it.

What's funny is the all the nuance to the persistent slow motion, where, mid-sword fight, the action slows down even further to emphasize this or that. It is nothing short of dumbfounding and, well, just dumb. Another humorous moment was when the subtitles read "gunfire in slow motion." Even the subtitles are bored here.

But my favorite (or er, well, doesn't that make it least favorite?) was the long stretch of slow motion grain harvesting. We see people swing the sickle in slow motion, the grain fall in slow motion, people bundle it up in slow motion, being picked up in slow motion, placed on a cart in slow motion (at least it's a floating cart I guess. How "space-operatic..."), then the grain being ground in slow motion. This in itself is silly, but then you realize that with all these flying ships, laser swords, etc., that what we're watching is quite literally how people did (and probably still do) harvest grain. When the hell did it swap to How It's Made? Where's the fun in watching actors pretend to work? It's as thrilling as a historic reenactment without the actual history. 

The grain is critical to the plot, in case you forgot the first film's stale plot about the evil "Motherworld" demanding the heroes' harvest in the small town of (checks internet), Providence. They're so low on food that they have to resort to flying way out into space to get some, apparently Walmarts doesn't exist in this nebulous time. At one point the residents of (double-checks internet) Providence practice defending themselves from the villains by using that very grain as dummies. Think of the wasted resources.

We again follow Kora (Sofia Boutella), the "Scargiver" in the title, but I'm not sure if that was before or after she gave main baddie Atticus (Ed Skrein) a literal scar when she almost killed him at the end of the last picture. Oh what, that's a spoiler? Consider yourself lucky for not having seen it. She, alongside her lover Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), Titus (Djimon Hounsou), Nemesis (Bae Doona), and Tarak (Staz Nair), among others either in the little village or returning from the first film, devise a surprise-attack on the Motherworld's men when they arrive to pick up the grown yield. They are far outnumbered and, as Jimmy the robot (an oddly-cast Anthony Hopkins, hopefully collecting a good paycheck) tells them, they "cannot win." Of course, there wouldn't be a sequel in the works if they lost, or maybe there would? I dunno, I'm not a storyteller, and neither is Zack Snyder.

If he was, the viewer would know when the films take place; the future? Then how come the big ship Dreadnought uses a manual hand-crank to position cannons? Wouldn't that be all electronic or something? OK what if it takes place in the past, then how come characters wear jeans? How are there holograms? How is a basic question like this even a question?!

Then there's the flashbacks, no not to the first film, but new scenes giving some much needed backstory. The day before the attack, our band of protagonists sit around, drink, and share their "truth." Titus goes first, then asks the others. It's all good and all, but once he gets to Kora and ask for her "story," you remember that the small-minutia of a background Kora has, pure "revenge," was shown in a different flashback that opens the picture. Please, Titus, how about YOU watch the damn film you're in! The best part of her flashback is, during an assassination (slow motion, naturally), we see the king (another weird casting decision, this time a barely used Cary Elwes), as he walks in on the trap. A live-band plays somber music as he and his family are about to die, and yet, they still play music. They missed a good opportunity to go "whomp whomp."

The whole thing plays like a film suffering from corporate meddling, as if everyone from the executives to the janitors trying to make it "theirs." It has this overly-homogenized feel that is sadly what happens when you give a blank-check to a man who made one good film back in 2004. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, but like the saying goes: "nice guys make terrible, mundane, long, laborious, obvious, banal, and probably even more adjectives, movies."

While this time around there isn't any rape attempt (a particularly unsavory moment from the first film), at two different points two different "strong" female characters need to be rescued by a man. Or boy, in the case of Nemesis, who you could argue is a symbol of her losing her children, as explained (badly) in the first film, but then you'd be giving it more thought than I think the filmmakers did. It's the kind of cinematic sexism that only a male director and three male credited screenwriters could mistake as a good idea.

Characters speak in terse and tedious terms, consisting of nothing but demands and arbitrary name-dropping in lieu of actual world-building; at one point the subtitles read "birds chirping," which is easily the best dialogue in the franchise.

Sting Review

Monster movies have existed almost as long as movies themselves, "creature features" if you will, and anyone who grew up on a steady diet of cinematic dinosaurs, alligators, snakes, mantises, and of course, spiders, laments the current CGI cheese that is the world today. But much like how "Jaws" is, and probably will be forever, the defacto "shark movie," 1990's "Arachnophobia" is the spider movie to beat, and "Sting," while far from made-for-TV schlock, is unlikely to turn anyone into an, ahem, arachnophobe.

It's biggest issue isn't its special effects, which seldom look fake, but it's own ambition. It wants so badly to be bigger than its seemingly small budget can afford, taking place in a single-location (a snowed-in apartment building), sports a very small cast and gives the characters such detailed backstory that it sometimes forgets it's a movie about a killer spider from space (space!). We follow Charlotte (a terrific Alyla Browne), a spunky and kinda weird preteen who finds the little arachnid in her grandma's apartment. Her grandma is suffering from Alzheimer's (or at least it suggests as much), which leads to some surprisingly funny dialogue, like her trying to pet the "big black dog" that came out of her wall.

Alyla strikes the perfect balance of naivety and maturity, initially fascinated by the little eight-legged pet she names "Sting." But he grows quickly and soon begins sneaking out of his glass jar home and attacks no less than a bird, cat and dog. Yes pet-lovers, you'll probably need to shield your eyes a few times.

She lives in a different apartment, with her mom Heather (Penelope Mitchell), stepdad Ethan (Ryan Corr) and baby brother. Both her parents work during the day and are working on their own comic book at night (yes really), but thanks to Ethan, who's the complex's maintenance worker, they don't have to pay rent. Or something like that. See, there is far FAR too much characterization in a film about a giant space spider.

Her parents are too busy to notice that there's this evil carnivorous monster in their daughter's room, instead too stressed about the deadline for their moonlighting gig. And about Heather's mom. And their infant son, who we're told will eat no-less than paper and paint if unsupervised. But the real core of the story is Ethan feeling disconnected from Charlotte, who still misses her real-dad despite having abandoning her and her mom. Scenes go on and on about non-spider stuff, and while well written and well performed, means we sit in a dark theater wondering if the reels were swapped mid-showing.

Charlotte takes Sting to another resident, some college kid who's using fish to try and cure diabetes (naturally what tertiary characters in these sort of movies do) named Eric (Danny Kim), who tricks her into leaving him with him. He (logically and rightfully) calls her dad, tells him it's dangerous, poisonous, etc., but instead of thinking "this is probably what killed the alcoholic women down the hall," Ethan, stressed about the fact that he was fired from his maintenance gig AND his publisher (or agent, or whoever) passed on his comic book (or something like that), explodes about how the spider could be a danger to her brother.

Family drama existing to an almost unspoken spider plot means characters inhibit a world that, while interesting in its own right, robs the moviegoer of what they came here for: giant spider action. Sting goes from something that could fit in the palm of your hand (scary in its own right) to like four-feet big in the matter of just a couple of scenes, which forces the narrative to become about trying to kill it. Something that, considering the brief ninety one minute runtime, means we don't get to see the damn creature we all came here to see. 

Godzilla x King: The New Empire Review

During the Shōwa Era of Godzilla films, Toho almost immediately abandoned the serious allegory of the first 1954 release in favor of kid-friendly popcorn pictures. They're the ones most Americans think of when they hear the word "Godzilla," with silly plots, inane dialogue and cheap visual mayhem that children, all around the world, ate up.

Toho's most recent two releases in the franchise, "Shin Godzilla" and "Godzilla Minus One," go back to the dour edge of that inaugural movie, with human characters acting like real humans might if they were in the situation. But over in the states, Legendary's "MonsterVerse," as it's called, goes straight for the cheese, and the latest one, "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire," is a glorious slice of American cheese that makes up for its lack of an actual point with nonstop optical delight. I was far more giddy than I should have been.

The plot, if you could call it a plot, involves everything but aliens, which is surprising when you consider how many canon Godzilla flicks do. It starts with Kong in "Hollow Earth," lamenting the fact that he's the last of his kind. He, and I'm sorry but I'm not making this up, is suffering from a toothache, and heads up to the surface for human help from Trapper (Dan Stevens), a sort of Ace Ventura veterinarian who so kindly replaces it. I never, ever, thought the plots of these things would get this ridiculous, but here we are.

Godzilla's here too, throwing a hissy fit on the surface, destroying other titans (non Kong/Godzilla monsters) as tries to power up before heading to a mysterious distress call. Yes, just like a video game, the King of the Monsters himself gets stronger with each boss he defeats. This is, as the kids put it, not high-class film making. His best scene is, not a fight strangely enough, but how he curls up and sleeps in Rome Colosseum like a cat. It's such an odd, funny scene that they have him do it twice.

Who else can hear this distress call? The last known survivor of the Iwi tribe, Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a deaf girl who can communicate using sign-language with Kong. I am all for better diversity in Hollywood (Kaylee is deaf in real life), but come on! When you begin to resemble the film adaptation of Michael Crichton's "Congo," you'd better be open to trying to "out-silly" it. Her surrogate mother Ilene (Rebecca Hall), is a high-ranking Monarch member, distraught by her daughter's inability to fit in with the other kids. You remember Monarch right? They're the team studying all the monsters, and director Adam Wingard, returning from the first one, is wise enough to realize that no one cares. Do you? If you did, you wouldn't be reading a review, you'd be seeing it on the biggest screen you could, probably twice. So it is monster-on-monster action, with the narrative only coming up when we need to explain why this beast is battling that one this time,

Ilene takes Jia, literally putting her life in danger, along with Trapper and monster podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry) down into the Hollow Earth, before Godzilla makes his way there and bumps into Kong. See, they hate each other, I think Kong said something about Godzilla's mom or something, I dunno. It doesn't matter. None of this matters. Leave your brain at the auditorium door and don't you dare forget the popcorn.

They end up combating carnivorous trees, discover ancient temples, and finally locate an unknown community of the Iwi tribe. Like any great Shōwa Era of Godzilla flick, this one lifts from other cinematic sources, this time from "Indiana Jones." All that's missing is minecarts and Nazis. (Oh god, please, I didn't mean to give the producers an idea for "Godzilla x Kong 3.")

Kong ends up deeper in Hollow Earth and stumbles upon an undisclosed location, which the film humorously tells us with onscreen text reading something like "Subterranean Section." (Snickers.) Here, he finds not one equally giant monkey, but several, and they immediately face off with their fists (and Kong's makeshift ax). After kicking the other apes's butts, he takes in a small Kong, who from now on I will refer to only by "Minilla Kong." They share a lot of screen time, and these scenes are devoid of dialogue and are kinda sweet, but then they tear apart some lake creature and share its guts. They didn't even wash their paws!

Minilla Kong takes Kong Senior to a fiery hellscape ruled by Skar King, a more lanky Kong who abuses the other Kongs in the area. (Are they all Kongs? Is "Kong" a surname? Does it matter?) I won't go on any more about the plot, because my life is too precious to describe every piece of candy in this bulging visual pinata. All I can say is that, while "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" lacks a purpose other than to make money, damn does it give you your money's worth.

In the Land of Saints and Sinners Review

I've compared Liam Neeson's filmography since his breakout role in 2008's "Taken" to that of the late Charles Bronson, and with "In the Land of Saints and Sinners," he does his take on Bronson's "The Mechanic," only it plays out more like a slow-burning dramatic thriller than a nasty action picture.

Liam stars as Finbar Murphy, which is a hilarious name that only becomes more funny with how serious characters yell it at each other. He's, get this, an aging assassin who we see take his final gig under the employment of Robert (Colm Meaney). Why's that? I dunno, I suppose he's tired of the emotional toll, that or he's got his eye on the neighbor Rita (Niamh Cusack), who doesn't know how me makes his money. He frequents a little pub where another one of his neighbors bartends (Sinéad, played by Sarah Greene), and one day he notices her daughter's got a nasty bruise on her neck. This, of course, pisses him off and, well, it's like he never retired.

He kills the man responsible, Sinéad's brother-in-law (Desamond Eastwood), and that really sets off his sister Doireann (Kerry Condon), who, alongside her two friends, as terrorist who have no firm compunction about killing a group of children in a bombing at the start of the film. (She cares enough to try and warn the kids, but not enough to stop the explosion. She's a woman of violent precision.) 

Murphy works alongside his former coworker Kevin, played excellently by Jack Gleeson, a younger assassin also employed by Robert. When he finds out who he just killed and what she's willing to to, including but not limited to properly damage and abuse towards women, the two try and figure out how to take her and her friends out without breaking the relative peace of the small Irish town. He's weary and tired of the killing, where as Kevin almost gets excited, at one point calling it "getting paid to do what he likes." Their dynamic lacks the homoerotic undertones of director Michael Winner's far more exploitative "The Mechanic," but the whole "veteran and newbie" relationship is otherwise much the same. Murphy is hardened, almost bored of the fight, where as Kevin lusts over the bloodshed, finding humor in every bullet he fires.

Then there's Doireann, who's unhinged and played coldly. She's soon works her way through the village loudly and with purpose: the intent to cause destruction and pain. The three main players are really interesting to watch, even if their motivations are old cloth. Liam in particular seems to be one script away from finding his "Gran Torino" character, with how limited his hand-to-hand blows are compared to the aim of his trusty shotgun.

Director Robert Lorenz, who also helmed Neeson in 2021's "The Marksman," is equally restraint as he was in that movie, but the actors and implications (not to mention the move from PG-13 to a hard-R rating) left we wanting a bit more actual blood in the bloodshed.

Asphalt City Review

There's no shortage of films based on a specific profession, from firefighting ("Backdraft") to storm chasing ("Twister"), but frequently Hollywood finds a most bare-bones narrative tying the action together (a serial arsonist and a divorcing couple, respectively). But not "Asphalt City," a brutal depiction of paramedics that has about as much plot as a documentary.

It has more in common with 1988's crime picture "Colors" by Dennis Hopper, which starred Sean Penn as the inexperienced cop and Robert Duvall as the more senior one. This time, we follow veteran EMS person Gene (Penn, coincidentally) and a rookie Ollie (Tye Sheridan) throughout New York as they respond to drug overdoses, emergency pregnancies, dead bodies, domestic violence, asthma attacks, dog bites, and more; pretty much every bad situation you could think of on the job. And the point? Well, there really isn't any on the surface. There isn't much explicit characterization of either man outside the fact that Gene's recently divorced (again) and Ollie is trying (again) to get into med school. The film cuts between bursts of extreme chaos and violence to scenes of the duo sitting in near silence as they take turns sleeping in the ambulance. The camera shakes and the music is repetitive and bombastic, making every disorientating moment for them disorientating for us. This is, at its core, an excellent piece of gritty, exploitative film making.

It's the kind of film where it is nearly impossible to catch the character's names, because introductions occur either in silence or off-screen; you end up listening intently to every line hoping to hear someone's moniker, or else you wait until the credits to know. (Or in other words, you wait to read IMDB for who-played-who.)

But "Asphalt City" never rises above being an exhaustive look into the seedy underbelly of NYC, with streets filled with trash, violence and anger like an old Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson film from the 70's. Early on, Gene give Ollie two or so weeks on the job, knowing what this gig can do to you, but Ollie is a cockeyed optimist who only wants to save people. To Gene, however, it's just a job that pays the bills (and his ex-wife's rent, so that he can see his daughter). Mostly, but I don't want to give anything away. The two grow close only because of circumstance and nothing else, and both men play their parts with confidence and seriousness.

There's a subplot involving this girl Ollie met at a club, Clara (Raquel Nave), who spends all but two scenes exposing her breasts and frequently a lot more. Her role is just as much sex appeal as it is to help display how day-after-day of mayhem can lead someone down a path of rage and hate, with Ollie going from being happy to play with her infant to choking her in one of the film's many relatively graphic sex scenes. He goes from looking for companionship to a pent-up release of emotions, frequently told through action over dialogue. 

And there's more insinuation than actual explanation, like how Gene chews on toothpicks on all but his last scene, where we see him puffing on a cigarette. Why? Well you be the judge, but the more you think about the individual moments that fly by seemingly at random, the more you want to learn about the trials and tribulations of real paramedics and not just what writers Ryan King and Ben Mac Brown dolled up for tinseltown.

Of course, this is based on the book Black Flies by Shannon Burke, based on his own experiences, but then again, this is shot more like a docudrama than documentary.

But for all the unorganized anarchy of the first two acts, the third act suddenly decides to give us something that resembles a plot, where Gene and Ollie are faced with trying to save a drug-using, HIV-positive mother and her home-birthed preterm baby. The decision to abruptly challenge the morality of the job feels more scripted than spontaneous, and by the time the unexpectedly optimistic route of redemption of the ending, which I will not spoil, rolls around, you feel betrayed. We see the relentless decay of men as they fail to properly deal with stress and handle their egos, only to chicken out with a "feel good" finale. Well, as close to a "feel good" finale considering its subject matter. 

"Asphalt City" works best when it's just a couple of guys doing a job, a job that just so happens to involve saving people, both the good and the bad. Once it start asking questions about the philosophy on what's happening, you realize it not only doesn't have an answer, but also doesn't know why it doesn't.