![]() (International sales: Endeavor Content, Los Angeles.) Producers: Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Mark Lane, Robert Jones, James Harris, Wayne Marc Godfrey. (in U.K.) release of a Fyzz Pictures, Thunder Road Films production in association with Maddem Films Ltd. (U.K.-U.S.) An Aviron Pictures (in U.S.)/Warner Bros. Reviewed online, Saint-Seurin-de-Prats, France, Dec. Still, in the age of franchise blockbuster bloat, there’s much to be said for an efficient B-movie that knows its place and purpose: Di Stefano, rather like his film’s brawny, brusque hero, has his mind on accomplishing the mission with as little flab and fuss as possible. In its best sequences, notably that nippily edited introductory sting and a prison lockdown soundtracked to a mesmerically blaring alarm, that back-to-basics quality is prickly and effective elsewhere, particularly in scenes centred on Common’s underdeveloped cop, the film takes on a TV-procedural quality. Tech credits are uniformly proficient, if never quite inspired. In the potentially thankless role of a hands-tied FBI drone with limited backup above and below her station, Pike does a lot of the legwork in humanizing this standoff: The role benefits considerably from her pinched-nerve intelligence and cool chemistry with Kinnaman, even if, five years on from her Oscar nod for “Gone Girl,” she feels a tad overqualified for the assignment. The ensuing tic-tac-toe game of double- and triple-crossings is busy but coherent: the screenplay, co-written by Di Stefano with genre regulars Rowan Joffe (“Before I Go to Sleep”) and Matt Cook (“Patriots Day”) keeps tidy tabs on the shifting stakes of the whole bloody tangle - even if, admittedly, it doesn’t always give us an urgent reason to care whether Pete’s undone by the mafia or the authorities. Yet corrupt forces from higher up are working against them, as Wilcox’s slithery superior (Clive Owen) threatens to drop the project entirely, while NYPD officer Grens (Common) has his own meddling eye on the case following his colleague’s death. His returning to prison, meanwhile, suits the Feds, as Pete’s aloof but emotionally invested handler Wilcox (Rosamund Pike) changes tack to bring things down from the inside. ![]() When one goes horribly wrong - in that aforementioned, hopped-up opening act - and a clashing undercover cop is killed, Polish drug lord “the General” (Eugene Lipinski) determines that Pete must take the fall. The FBI has other plans for him, however: In exchange for early parole, he’s made to act as an undercover agent in various seamy, ill-organized narcotics busts. After doing time for bar-brawling manslaughter, rough-hewn but good-hearted family man Pete Koslow (Kinnaman) wants a quiet life with his wife (Ana de Armas, her thin role all the more glaring in the wake of her “Knives Out” stardom) and daughter. Loosely adapted from the 2016 novel “Three Minutes” by Swedish crime-writing duo Roslund & Hellström, this largely British-funded production relocates the action from Colombia to a vaguely defined New York City, somewhat streamlining its international tangle of heavies: everyone’s indeterminately American save for the generically villainized Polish drug mafia.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |