Pretty Lethal Review

One could be forgiven for assuming Amazon Prime's "Pretty Lethal," an action thriller about ballerinas, is just a late knockoff of last year's "From the World of John Wick: Ballerina," and honestly, it would have been a hell of a lot more enjoyable had it been. At least it would have known what it wanted to be. Instead, this sloppy, messy, idiotic, goofy, silly, bloated, confused and imbecilic flick gives us awkward scenes like Uma Thurman speaking in an awful Hungarian accent, Uma Thurman in a peg-leg and Uma Thurman, face painted white, dressed up like a sugar plum fairy. And she's just a supporting character!

The plot, sure let's call it that: a dance troupe has plane trouble trying to attend a premier ballerina competition in Budapest, and are forced to take a bus. The airline lost their luggage, and like it always happens in the movies, the bus breaks down in the middle of the rainy woods. "But the competition!" the girls whine to their instructor Miss Thorna (Lydia Leonard), so instead of calling for a tow-truck, she decides to have the girls walk to civilization. Clearly, Miss Teacher here has never seen another movie before in her life.

They quickly find themselves at a shady hotel, in the woods of course, with no other buildings in sight, taken in by none other than ex-ballerina Devora (Uma Thurman). She promises to call them a taxi, dry their clothes and feed them, but because plot, gangster son Pasha (Tamás Szabó Sipos) shoots the teacher in the head for rejecting his unwanted sexual advances. Truly, a scene everyone expects in a movie written and directed by women.

I suppose I should mention the troupe themselves- to summarize, they're walking cliches. (Or is that dancing?) We have Bones (Maddie Ziegler), a poor girl whose talent landed her a solo in their group performance. She butts heads with the jealous Princess (Lana Condor), a rich girl who's daddy gets her everything except better films to star in. Then we have Avantika playing the Jesus-loving Grace, whose name is the only clever thing about her. And finally, because no teen-drama would be complete without siblings, we have the sisters: the over-protective Zoe (Iris Apatow) and the deaf Chloe (Millicent Simmonds). The classmates never really feel like people who would be together accidentally, let alone go on a trip for a common interest, but what do I know about tutus?

But back to the story. The death leaves Devora in a bit of a situation, since she's been paying off a debt to Pasha's dad since taking over the hotel from her dad. So, instead of sympathizing with the dancers, calling the police or having a reaction even remotely human, she decides hide the girls in the basement, and then call "The Doktor" (Gábor Nagypál), to kill and then remove any form of identification on the bodies. It's a pretty lousy way of mass-murdering, since they escape and begin killing the patrons off one-by-one, sometimes even two-by-two. For some reason, they're all able to use knives, guns, hammers, etc., to take down henchmen like grunts in a video game. It helps that, despite severely outnumbering the dancers, the pawns in the hotel all attack slowly, without coordination and with a conspicuous lack of guns. I wouldn't mind this (these? I can't remember) relatively major lapse in logic if the action scenes were exciting, but they're not. I know none of heroines are really slicing a man's throat with a razor attached to their pointe shoes, but the camera angles are never able to cover up the fact that blade and skin aren't really connecting. These kills have no thrills.

Yet I can't get over the plot: Why did the bus drive through the lonely forest? And how come the hotel is in the woods, either? Why would anyone drive miles outside the city just to have a drink at the bar or book a room? And it's packed, dozens of nameless goons chain smoking their drinks down in the background as the action unfolds. I had fun thinking about what kind of world this flick occupies, one where everyone in a foreign country is immediately nefarious; one where Hungarians sometimes speak in English to each other despite it clearly being their second, or even third language. Not a good sign when poking holes in the movie is more enjoyable then the movie itself.

It helps that the whole production is so icky, this under current of misogyny masquerading as female empowerment running rampant throughout: I mean, can't Hollywood tolerate having women headline an action film if there wasn't at least one scene of attempted sexual assault? For some reason, we have two of those here. 

There is an ambitious film hidden inside "Pretty Lethal," unburdened by expectations and conventions, but it is not what's ultimately onscreen. Instead, it heavy-headily settles on the message that women need to stick together to make it in a world of xenophobia and sleaze, or else they'll be name-called, abused, drugged, raped or killed. Or all of them, depending on if the attacker has the time.

War Machine Review

Netflix's latest release "War Machine," a 2026 science fiction war action film, is unrelated to the streaming service's other "War Machine," which was a 2017 satirical war film. I don't get it either, I just felt inclined to get it out of the way.

This new one has a plot ripped straight out of a low-rent aisle of an 80's Blockbuster- a giant robot attacks a group of Army Ranger trainees during a simulated mission. Its characters don't even have names, with Alan Ritchson taking the starring role as 81. See, every potential recruit is given a number in place of their identity, so we have a cast consisting of 7 (Stephan James), 44 (Alex King) and 15 (Blake Richardson), among others. Must be easier on the screenwriters than coming up with first and last names, or, gasp, middle ones!

As the film opens, we see 81, a Staff Sergeant, and his brother (Jai Courtney in a glorified cameo) get ambushed in Afghanistan. But right before the attack, the two decide to join RASP, which the interwebs tells me stands for "Ranger Assessment and Selection Program." His brother is killed from wounds sustained from the assault, so, stricken with guilt, enlists despite a knee injury. The man is a tank, passing every challenge thrown his way, remaining icy cold to his team but eluding any and all attempts to make him team leader. Then on the final week, those remaining embark on a fictitious mission, but right before they strap into their helicopters, his superior (Dennis Quaid) appoints him lead. Good luck dodging that, number 81!

They need to make it deep in the forest, locate and destroy a plane, pick up a P.O.W. and then make it back within twenty or so hours. When they find the plane, it doesn't look like any they've ever seen, but the group shrugs their collective shoulders and tries to blow it up anyway. That's bad news for them, because the aircraft isn't an aircraft, it's some sort of monster robot that quickly kills much of the troop. Those who weren't exploded by lasers swiftly scatter, but the giant hunk of murderous metal stalks them, blasting the survivors down a cliff. They soon find themselves at a raging riverside, they try crossing with ropes, but not before Mr. Deathbot finds them, sending the party down the angry waters and over a waterfall. Bet that wasn't in the recruitment brochure.

"War Machine" is a big, loud, dumb movie, and for almost the entire runtime, I was rooting alongside it. The action is frequent, well-staged and generally exciting, coming up with all sorts of different places for our band of nameless heroes to be turned into human stew. Sure, the characters are practically devoid of any personality outside of cliches (15 is a jokester, etc.,), but so what? Isn't the whole idea behind government armies conformity? Actually don't answer that.

But then there's the ending, the movie having somehow kept my interest right up until the last ten or so minutes. As I sat in my comfy couch, I enjoyed the mystery of wondering what this mayhem making mech could be, where it came from and why it was so good at blowing people up into little chunks of red flesh. I was thinking about the film on its own terms, instead of poking holes at its silly premise. But then writers Patrick Hughes (who also directed) and James Beaufort decided to give us an answer. Any answer would have been stupid, in fact. However, the one they went for is so hokey, so obviously trying to be a modern-day piece of feel-good military propaganda that it took me straight out of its goofy world of pulpy, commercial entertainment and into the real world. And that is a scary place to be.

The Bluff Review

Ah the swashbuckler film. It's hard to believe it was once a common sight in theaters, bit today, not so much. The last big one was probably 2017's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales," and be honest, do you remember even one scene from it? I know I don't.

But Amazon Prime's "The Bluff" is more "Pirates of the John Wick" than "of the Caribbean," with our heroine moving faster with guns and swords than any swashbuckler I've ever seen.

Priyanka Chopra stars as Ercell, who's husband, T.H. (played by Ismael Cruz Córdova) is at sea searching for a cure for the legs of their physically disabled son Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo). She stays behind to bake him a coconut cake for his birthday (wonder if he wished for his legs to work?), alongside her sister-in-law Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green) on a quiet coast of the Cayman Brac. Lizzy, as she's called, plans to run away with a boy, but the night of, Ercell awakens to men outside her quaint house. It's, gasp, pirates! 

Little does she know, T.H.'s ship was commandeered by none other than the infamous Captain Connor, and wouldn't you know it, him and Ercell have a bit of a history. He kidnapped her at a young age and turned her into a fellow buccaneer, until one day she stabbed him in the back (er, well, chest) and took off with his money. He's been looking for her ever since, and considering his luck finally finding her, you'd think it was his birthday.

He's played by Karl Urban with a calm intensity that verges on overacting, but that's just the kind a dumb movie like this demands. He knows what kind of picture he's in, whereas everyone else takes their dialogue so seriously as if Francis Ford Coppola was behind the camera instead of Frank E. Flowers.

But back to the plot: Ercell first tries to play dumb when a few greasy men hold a sword to her, but like any modern woman, she makes quick work of them using knifes, chairs, frying pans and her bare fists. Freshly freed, she has Isaac head to light the signal fire to alert the British with Pastor Bradley (David Field), while she tries to locate Lizzy. Most of the island holds up in the local church, while the villains try to find Ercell. And the gold, wouldn't be a pirate movie if there wasn't a gold bounty.

It never explains how Ercell here knows this style of fighting, mind you: oh sure, we're told she's previously a seafaring criminal, but I must have missed the day at school where we learned pirates knew "gun fu."

The fighting is bloody and frequent, but it rarely thrills. It's also way too dark, which is especially a problem during the back-half of the runtime with a bulk of the action taking place in a murky, dingy cave. I had all my blinds down and I still struggled. And the problem wasn't my TV, it was obviously a stylistic choice- some scenes are draped in total blackness, the only light coming from the barrel of the gun. When I could see what was going on, it was fine, I guess, I just don't know why the filmmakers didn't want me to see more of it.

The "John Wick" movies, the obvious inspiration here, had almost a sense of humor to them, as if they acknowledged the inherent silliness of killing a man with a book through his mouth. But "The Bluff" fails to find such giddy pleasure with its mayhem, it's just violent to justify its "R" rating. It adds little new to the action thriller genre outside what costumes everyone wears and the occasional use of cannons.