Action

Bushwick (2017)

Published

6 years ago

September 15, 2017

Summary

When a Texas military force invades their Brooklyn neighborhood, 20-year-old Lucy and war veteran Stupe must depend on each other to survive.

Genre : Action
Country : USA

Cast :
Dave Bautista : Stupe
Brittany Snow : Lucy
Angelic Zambrana : Belinda

Director :
Cary Murnion
Jonathan Milott

My opinion on “Bushwick”

“I mean it’s more tactical.
This isn’t an attack.
This is an invasion.”

There’s one thing this film surprised me with. And that’s the speed at which the violence begins. One moment Lucy (Brittany Snow) walks with her boyfriend through a subway station. The next moment, he’s lying dead next to her and in the background you can hear the sound of automatic guns and screaming people in panic. Turns out a war started in this part of New York. A kind of American Civil War in guerrilla style. The sound effects and the way in which the camera follows fleeing Lucy looks a lot like a third person shooter. Even Lucy’s sister Belinda (Angelic Zambrana) thought the neighbors were playing “Call of Duty” all the time.

Where’s Snake Plissken when you need him?

It’s only when Lucy is rescued by Stupe (Dave Bautista), a concierge with a military background, this realistic looking film turns into a survival journey through a suburban district of New York. Immediately I had to think of movies like “No Escape“. But also of older hit-movies such as “Escape from New York” and the magnificent film “Warriors“. A turbulent flight through neighborhoods where street gangs suddenly take up arms against the forces who try to take over Bushwick and punks who take adventage of the lawlessness to rob neighborhood stores. And all this looks as if it’s filmed in one take.

Those Texans again!

The reason why those troops are penetrating this neighborhood and total anarchy breaks out, sounds quite ridiculous and unlikely the first instance. But thinking further about it afterwards, you could say it isn’t. Such a situation could occur somewhere in the world, given the interracial and domestic conflicts that arise everywhere. But apart from this original approach, this film has little to offer. The rest of it is just about the two main characters trying to escape the violance in a city that looks like a battlefield. Even the noisy and rebellious looking local residents who are waving with their illegal weapons excitedly, don’t make it more interesting. Although some of them were in a high stage of enthousiasm.

Mumble mumble mumble. He’s such a wonderful conversational companion.

In addition to the fact that it’s all simplistic and there aren’t really surprising developments, there were also some things that were quite annoying. For example, the continuous mumbling of Dave Bautista almost the entire movie. Besides the emotional closing argument, his oral contribution was limited. He resembled Rambo who also mumbled the whole movie in those days. And although he seems to have a lot of military experience, he continously refused to use more sophisticated firearms. I’ve lost count of the number of times I got pissed because they ignored modern automatic guns, which were lying around for the taking. They stubbornly held on to their small handguns. I would have known better.

No survival skills needed to watch this movie completely.

I’m not sure if it was the intention to make a political statement. If so, they didn’t quite succeed in doing that. Before you know it they shifted back to making a superficial action film with Jews jumping around with Uzi’s. In general, the acting isn’t so bad. Brittany Snow is doing her best as an emerging survival expert. Dave Bautista’s posture is very suitable for playing the character Stupe. His physique and rough-hewn behavior makes an extremely dangerous neanderthal of him (mumbling included). And if you’re looking for a movie with a denouement so noncompliant compared to the rest, don’t look any further. Believe me. So, “Bushwick” isn’t special, but you don’t need survival skills to watch it entirely.

My rating 4/10
Links : IMDB

FILM RATING

Action

Godzilla Minus One | Official Trailer #2

Post war Japan is at its lowest point when a new crisis emerges in the form of a giant monster, baptized in the horrific power of the atomic bomb

Published

3 weeks ago

November 6, 2023

Staff

Genre:

Action, Adventure, Drama

Release Date:

December 1, 2023

Director:

Takashi Yamazaki

Cast:

Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada

Plot Summary:

Post war Japan is at its lowest point when a new crisis emerges in the form of a giant monster, baptized in the horrific power of the atomic bomb

FILM RATING

Action

The Continental Review: Not The Prequel We Needed

Published

2 months ago

October 4, 2023

Kevin Verma

Ever since Lionsgate greenlit this series in early 2017, fans of the franchise have been eagerly anticipating to see how the John Wick universe expands. 4 movies in, the John Wick franchise is widely known as one of the greatest action movie franchises of all time with our titular character (a.k.a Baba Yaga) becoming one of the most iconic and bad-ass figures ever in Hollywood. The Continental: From The World of John Wick is a prequel series that tells the story of Winston Scott and how he became the manager of New York’s The Continental branch.

The miniseries was developed by Greg Coolidge, Kirk Ward and Shawn Simmons. It is executive produced by Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese, Derek Kolstad, David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, the director of all four John Wick movies. It is structured as a 3-night event told through three 90-minute episodes. The series was originally supposed to air on Starz, but the network sold it to Peacock in 2022. After 6 years in development, it finally aired on Peacock this September.

A lot has been made of the subtitle of the project ever since it was announced. The fact that the makers needed to include it says a lot about the show. It almost felt like the prime marketing asset for it many times as the other promotional material didn’t necessarily create a lot of hype for the show. Albert Hughes directed the first and third episodes, while Charlotte Branstrom directed the second, and disappointingly both directors do not bring the same novelty or creative prowess that Chad Stahelski managed to bring in the John Wick movies.

The show also surprisingly lacks any real star power. This franchise is one of Lionsgate’s most prized assets, so you would imagine that they would make sure to get a big cast and crew for this prequel miniseries, but they didn’t. Colin Woodell as Winston Scott is the clear standout among the cast despite delivering only a decent performance, which says a lot about the acting standards in this 3-episode miniseries. Many have criticized the casting of Mel Gibson in the series, but I personally had no issue with his performance and he’s also the most recognizable member of the cast despite having no real audience pull anymore.

The writing doesn’t offer too much to ponder upon or any seriously shocking turns in the story as most of the focus is on making the product as epic, badass and action-packed as possible. Some of the characters had some interesting layers to them, especially Charon (Ayomide Adegun) and Lou (Jessica Allain). Lemmy (Adam Shapiro) provides some much-needed comic relief with his witty dialogues. The structuring of the story works really well as a 3-night event which sets the high stakes and sets a standard of intensity for the narrative.

But the thing that people were most looking forward to, was the action and how it fared against John Wick. Unfortunately, that department was inconsistent as well. Ben Robson’s fight sequence in the early part of the first episode was great and it makes you optimistic that the action would get better from here on, but it never does. Most of the action blocks here involve explosions and guns rather than the hand-to-hand combat John Wick franchise is known for. Some of the action was awesome and some of it sadly wasn’t.

The Continental: From the World of John Wick brings a lot of glamour as it tries to expand its world but fails to engage with its paper-thin plot. The characters are mostly dull with a formulaic villain and misses the presence of a magnetic protagonist like Wick. A prequel about Wick’s backstory would’ve been much more interesting than this inconsistent prequel event saved by its style and some great action. It has almost enough to be its own thing but doesn’t quite have enough to match its parent movies.

The Continental: From the World of John Wick premieres on Peacock in the US and Prime Video in the UK and Australia on 22 September, with new episodes weekly.