Hold on to your hats, we're going to attempt a plot summary: Jimmy Bobo (Stallone) is a hitman whose partner is killed after they both have killed this other guy who they'd been hired to kill. Because he turns out to be an ex-cop, Detective Kwon (the extremely handsome Sung Kang of "Fast Five") is sent from DC to investigate, and decides to team up with Bobo, who saves his life and introduces him to his comely daughter (Sarah Shahi). Mercenary Keegan (Momoa) is the guy being sent to do the bad guys' (Slater and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) killings, causing a lot of bloody mists and arterial spray, all while Kwon and Bobo form a fragile alliance that mostly consists of Stallone calling the Korean detective a bunch of pet names like "Confucius," "Oddjob" and "Kato." 90% of the exposition is delivered over the telephone by an anonymous female voice who tells Kwon where the next bad guy is, so that the two can bicker in the car on the way there before Stallone goes in and kills him. And then the climax happens in, where else, an abandoned power plant, which may look familiar because all abandoned?power plants?look pretty similar, or because, as our press notes tell us, it's the exact same abandoned?power plant?where Hill shot his very first film, 1975's "Hard Times" with Charles Bronson. Ah, memories.?
Based on the graphic novel "Du Plomb Dans La Tete" by Matz, the screenplay was, unbelievably enough, written by Alessandro Camon who also wrote "The Messenger." We assume he realized, wisely, that this is not a film where people care about consistent characterization or narrative coherence, and his job was pretty much to get the guys from killing A to killing B with as little fuss as possible. Because it is all about the killings, aside from a few nice scenes between Bobo and Kwan in the car, in which Stallone gets to be funny. It is all about the gloriously throwback violence, the astonishingly consequence-less shootings and murders and blowings up and stabbings and vehicular manslaughters. And Hill handles these like the pro he is; perhaps he's a dinosaur, but he's a dinosaur who can still kick a head in real good. When the action climax happens, after all the pyrotechnics before, between two muscly guys who throw down their guns in favor of a pair of convenient axes, and that climax still delivers, then you know you're watching the work of a special, if very specific, talent. A whole lot of this grade is probably sentiment, because, Lord it is extraordinarily silly on almost every level, but we remember the '80s, and it was genuinely fun to head back there for a while. Hill, "you had me at 'fuck you'. " [B-]pat robertson hunger games trailer hunger games trailer in plain sight hunger games movie review bats hunger games review
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