The film is a show of Old Testament judgment that sees all people as sinners and thus deserving of all the punishment they receive.
The games are fixated on the idea of honor among thieves, but you wouldn’t know that from this antic, meaningless film.
Joe Bell proves that the phrase “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” is value neutral.
Symptomatic of the Marvel-ization of modern action cinema, the film seems to exist mostly as an advertisement for future product.
Mile 22’s action passes by as jumbled images from various vantage points, all edited together with no rhyme or reason.
The film is by and large a conspicuously manufactured thriller that moves between manipulative psych-outs.
The film portrays parenting as the death of manhood, a final surrender to the castrating effects of domesticity.
The sensory overload of Michael Bay’s hyperkinetic cinema is such that it eradicates any actual sense of place.
The majority of the film manages to circumvent the blunt allure of vaguely jingoistic “Boston Strong” patriotism.
It pulls back from the effectiveness of its macro view of hell on earth to focus narrowly on Mike Williams’s heroism.
The film offers audiences a bundle of fetishes dressed up as an existentialist thriller about the class system.
It becomes too cruel to generate laughter for anyone who would empathize with Ferrell’s tantrum-prone man-child.
The film is a redundant showcase for Seth MacFarlane’s racy, dick-centric sense of humor.
A shrug-worthy stab at picturing the contemporary black market, delving into a fantasyland of luxe coastal casinos and neon-lit bathhouses.
Is everyone ready for Mark Wahlberg to tap in with another test run of his wooden “surprise face”?
A collection of comments about winning, losing, perseverance, discipline, violence, compassion, exploitation, responsibility, and ambition.
Like his prior The Kingdom, Peter Berg’s film pretends to dabble in a frothy moral ambiguity, swiftly betraying its true aims with trigger-happy jingoism.
Paramount jacks up the presentation of Bay’s unexpectedly bold Pain & Gain with a top-shelf A/V transfer.
Viewer/character solidarity only holds up for so long, and the film falls hard into twisty, nonsense territory, skipping over its stronger themes in the process.
The cinema, as a form of popular culture has, more or less, always been a democratic medium, contingent on viewers showing up in support.