Rick Rudge (rickrudge)

The Bank Job (2008)

When you think of a Jason Statham movie you think of lots of car chases with "J" turns, squealing tires, and gun shots, plus opportunities to see Jason with his shirt off. But, this movie is more of a caper movie than an adventure movie. It still offers plenty of twists and turns, though.

Very loosely based on actual events in 1971, this movie covers this from the robbers point of view, sort of like "The Great Train Robbery". But, the story is also complicated with the other many characters that are inter-twined. It's supposed to be somewhat funny, but it lacks all of the fun of a Guy Ritchie gangster movie. But, the craziness is doubly strange because it actually happened.

Terry Leather (Statham), has been doing a stint of the straight life, running a sleazy used car lot with his mates. The business is having some trouble from some loan sharks. Then an old neighborhood girl-made-good, Martine Love (Saffron Burrows) comes back into their lives. She's got a bank job for them from a male friend who supposedly works in security. The bank's burglar alarm is disabled and the safety deposit boxes will be wide open to being broken into undetected.

This is way beyond what ever these small-time-crooks have done in the past, but if they're successful, it will be very profitable, so they're anxious to step up. There's a catch though. Terry is suspicious of Martine's security friend, Miles Urquart (Tim Everett), who turns out to be an MI5 (or is it 6?) agent. It turns out that this is all a government sponsored break-in to retrieve some damaging photos of one of the Royals sexual antics.

There's also a famous British madam who also has some compromising photos of members of Parliament, some accounting books from a gangster who includes some names of bad cops on the take, and a bad-ass black political activist who's also a gangster in his own right. These people all come together when their security boxes get broken into.

At first, Terry and his mates are clueless as to what they've got their hands on, bagging up all of the untraceable cash and jewels, but soon they realize how much trouble they're going to be in from some seriously dangerous people. This is an excellent movie and well worth a watch.

Le Doulos (1962)

Also known as Doulos: The Finger Man. This is another good Jean-Pierre Melville crime drama that I was able to watch on the Sundance Channel. This seems a lot more Film Noir than Bob le Flambeur, in my humble opinion with it's work in dark shadowy spaces with characters who you simply don't know to trust. And, let's not forget the wonderful femme fatales. :-)

The film starts with Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani) walking through the rougher streets of Paris, freshly released from prison. He's got to get back into business, to make some money, but he also has some vengeance in mind.

His friends keep warning him not to trust his other friend, Lilien (played by a very young Jean-Paul Belmondo), including his beautiful girlfriend, Therese (Monique Hennessy), but Maurice feels that he can trust him good enough, unless he's proven wrong. But, things don't look very good for Lilien when the break and enter job that Maurice and a partner are on, turns out to be a set-up.

Both are in it pretty deep with the Police Superintendent Clain (Jean Desailly) who's out to get them anyway that he can, and is also trying to get anyone to rat on their criminal friends.

My friend, groaningbitch, will get a good laugh about Lilien's love of asian fashion sense. His home is all decorated with asian nick nacks, and he has a girlfriend, Fabienne (Fabienne Dali) who even dresses in chinese-style silk dresses. ;-)

All in all, Le Doulos is a very good movie and well worth a watch.

First off, I'm pretty sure that "Red Dust" is not yet available on DVD here in the U.S. I've checked with http://www.mgm.com and http://www.amazon.com/ If anyone has the inside track who will be distributing this, I'd love to hear from you. There is another movie named "Red Dust" (2004) that stars Hillary Swank, that is probably what Flixter is confusing this with. We're talking about the Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Mary Astor, "Red Dust" (1932) here. Gable plays a rubber plantation owner, Dennis Carson. Fallen dove, Valentine Jefferson, played by Jean Harlow is sort of hiding out from the law and sort of hanging with Dennis. Things are going good until a young married couple Gary and Barbara Willis, played by Gene Raymond and Mary Astor show up for a job. While Gary fights off a fever, Dennis falls in love with Barbara. This movie was a big success and was pretty racy for it's time. It was remade in 1953 as "Mogambo" with Clark Gable, Eva Gardner, and Grace Kelly.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Finally a movie review from this century. I'm an amateur cartoonist, plus, I live in Milwaukie, Oregon, which is the headquarters of Dark Horse Comics, so naturally, I would love "Frank Miller's Sin City". This movie includes stories from Frank Miller's graphic novels, The Big Fat Kill, That Yellow Bastard, and The Hard Goodbye. http://www.darkhorse.com/ I've heard the many complaints about this movie, and can relate to it. The cartoony look of the movie is as much a curse as a benefit. The important part of it is the look and style of the movie. The violence, sex, and the script of the movie (making it an R rating) is very much stylized, made frame for frame from the graphic novel source. This is definitely a "guy flick", but there are some ladies (God bless them) who will go for it. The simple and shadowy backgrounds add to the look and the feel of the atmosphere, and the characters are just as shadowy. They're not pretty to look at, but you can't keep your eyes off them, all the same. Just look at all the images on this page and you can understand what sells this movie. It's the look of it. There's already been enough talk about the green screen method in making this movie so I won't need to go there, except to say that I'm looking forward to the sequel to "Sin City". I'm not necessarily into "300" or in Miller's politics, but I love "Sin City". I'm especially looking forward to Hollywood finally making the Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars". This story was something that could never be made into a movie until now, that the technology is up to speed for making it. I'll definitely be in the theater in 09 to see that.