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Tag: crime

Blow
Entertainment

Blow Review

William McPherson

Years ago when I was a teenager at a high school football game, some random girl told me I “looked like that guy from Blow”.... Now aside from sporting the same hair style at the time, it was the most untrue, but also most flattering compliment I have ever received about my own personal appearance. I just rewatched this movie the other night, and the thought occurred to me while this movie is perfectly in my wheelhouse in terms of style, plot, and soundtrack, is this as good as some say it is? I…

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Key Largo
Entertainment

Key Largo Review

William McPherson

This was the last movie that John Huston made with Humphrey Bogart, and one of the more overlooked ones as well. World War II veteran Frank McCloud visits a sleepy little bed and breakfast in Key Largo to give his respects to the family of an old war pal who has passed on. Along the way he meets his buddy’s widow (Lauren Bacall), his father (Lionel Barrymore) and last but not least, the infamous Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) who is staying at the hotel with a few other hoodlums, and plotting…

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The Public Enemy
Entertainment

The Public Enemy Review

William McPherson4 Comments

This is a story of two kids, Tom Powers and Matt Doyle, who begin a life in crime early on. One of them winds up going straight and becomes a policemen, the other winds up a crook. You can guess which one James Cagney plays. This movie is over eighty years old but still feels fresher and more original than at least half of the movies I see on a given year. The aesthetics and cinematography are astoundingly good for a movie this old, and the movie flows like a modern Scorsese gangster film, which…

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The Dead Pool
Entertainment

The Dead Pool Review

William McPherson

It had completely escaped my memory that both Liam Neeson and Jim Carrey (in yes, their only movie together) appeared in the fifth and final installment of the Dirty Harry franchise known as “The Dead Pool”. Those are two of my favorite actors for very different reasons, and if any modern actor was going to take over the mantle of Dirty Harry right now Neeson would definitely be it, although at the time of this movie, he was a few decades away from becoming the future action star legend from the…

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Sudden Impact
Entertainment

Sudden Impact Review

William McPherson

This was the first Dirty Harry movie to be made in the 1980s, and as such the change in tone was very noticeable. This was a time when marketing and product placement became much more obvious in movies, and these kinds of movies more or less became vehicles to establish catch phrases and make flashy trailers, and also tell a story if there was enough budget left at the end of the explosions. Clint Eastwood returns here in his fourth go around in the role, and you can tell he’s just kind of here…

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The Enforcer
Entertainment

The Enforcer Review

William McPherson

In this the third installment of the Dirty Harry series, Harry Callahan takes on a group of Mayor kidnapping hippy-terrorists known as the People's Revolutionary Strike Force (PRSF), Black Extremists, and also deals with feminism in his own unique way. The feminism bit comes when Callahan is assigned a partner (which never, ever works out well in these movies…) that “happens to be” female played by Tyne Daly. The diminutive Daly spends much of the movie trading barbs with Eastwood, until of…

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Magnum Force
Entertainment

Magnum Force Review

William McPherson

Force, the second movie of the Dirty Harry film franchise was released just two years after the original, and in many ways is a response to the criticism leveled against it. It is quite strange that the bad guys of this film are vigilante cops gone too far unless you look at it from that lens of responding to the claims of the first movie that Harry Callahan was just a fascist who wanted to rip apart the Bill of Rights and blow baddies away. In this movie Callahan actually has to defend the very…

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Dirty Harry
Entertainment

Dirty Harry Review

William McPherson

Socially and politically speaking now is probably not the right time to review a movie like Dirty Harry, a movie I have loved since I was really too young to be watching it to begin with. There is an argument made by some that some of the current rash of police violence can be blamed on movies like Dirty Harry because today’s policemen in many cases grew up on them. The thing is, Dirty Harry was never supposed to be a role model. He was a statement, a generational response to the urban violence…

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True Romance
Entertainment

True Romance Review

William McPherson

I do not think it is a stretch to call this the best Christian Slater lead movie ever produced. Not high praise when the next highest runner’s up include such classics as “Gleaming the Cube” and “Young Guns II” (AKA Brat Back Goes West – Part Duex). That said this is a hell of a movie, and Slater represents himself accordingly. This was also one of the first major movies written by a future star director/writer known as Quentin Tarintino, and it has of course many of the trademark attributes…

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3,000 Miles to Graceland
Entertainment

3,000 Miles to Graceland Review

William McPherson

This movie, while both a critical and box office failure, is to me a good hidden gem example of a fun “garbage movie”. Take the preposterous plot that involves a large group of Elvis impersonators robbing a Vegas casino and then wind up turning on each other (have mercy!) leaving the two alpha males to fight over the remaining prize. (They just could not go on together, with suspicious minds… Okay, I’ll stop) Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner are both huge Elvis fans so it’s easy to see the fun…

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Entertainment

Rolling Thunder Review

William McPherson

Movies can tell us a lot about the political and social climate of the times in which they were made. The 70s for instance, as evidenced by movies like this, Death Wish, and Dirty Harry was a time when there was a lot of right wing backlash against the previous decade bubbling up. We had a return of the old masculine heroes of yesteryear, only they were combined with the counter culture anti-heroes of the 60s who didn’t give a damn what the audience thought of them, only now instead of fighting…

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Beyond The Law
Entertainment

Beyond The Law Review

William McPherson

Sometimes it’s best to leave childhood favorites in your childhood. This might have been one of those cases. I would have been around ten to twelve years old when I first saw “Beyond The Law”, which also would have been my first exposure to the idea of biker gangs and such, and at the time I thought it was just about the coolest film ever made. It’s filled with loud Harleys, wild bikers, tons of groovy rock music, and plenteous obscenities, violence, and nudity galore! (Yeah, my parents probably…

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Mud
Entertainment

Mud Review

William McPherson2 Comments

Ellis and Neckbone live on the banks of the Arkansas river. What an amazing place to grow up this must be. Ellis stays on a houseboat with his father and mother, who are going through problems he cannot even begin to understand, but that may soon cost him his entire known way of life. In the evenings he sneaks off with his best friend, the aforementioned Neckbone, to explore the river and the many hidden treasures contained therein. One such adventure leads them to a small island, where they…

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Night of the Hunter
Entertainment

Night of the Hunter Review

William McPherson

It isn’t easy being a widow. Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) finds that out the hard way when her good intentioned husband Ben (Peter Graves) finds himself hanging from the gallows after robbing a local bank. The movie is set during the depression, and bank robbing at the time was about the noblest form of outlawry to be found, especially to many down and out sodbusters who blamed greedy bankers for sucking up their entire life savings while they had to sit and watch their families nearly starve…

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Homefront
Entertainment

Homefront Review

William McPherson

There was a much more interesting movie that bookended Homefront’s main story. It was about a long haired Jason Statham infiltrating a biker gang lead by a guy called Danny T, played by Chuck Zito, and it ended with a giant police raid, featuring an intense standoff in which T’s son basically commits suicide by cop as a dozen or so uniformed officers make it rain exploding squibs on his chest while Danny T looks at Statham and swears vengeance. At this point I want the movie to go back in time…

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Prisoners
Entertainment

Prisoners Review

William McPherson

Keller Dover is an uber-macho survivalist who keeps a basement full of canned goods and assorted Zombie Apocalypse gear all set up in neat alphabetically ordered shelving units. During a Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s house, both his daughter and his friend’s daughter go missing in an apparent kidnapping. Normally kidnapping movies save the kidnapping for at least a little ways into the movie to establish a pattern of everyday life. This movie instead goes for the shock route of placing the…

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American Hustle
Entertainment

American Hustle Review

William McPherson2 Comments

stle is the best movie to come out of 2013, but it is for damned sure the most fun one to have made it to the big screen. Wow, what a fun ride that was. I am going to spend the next few hundred words or so just completely gushing about this movie with no pretense of objectivity or any other journalistic credos so read on at your own risk if you will.  I always get a little nervous going into a movie that has received so much critical acclaim, as sometimes such acclaim only serves to raise the…

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2 Guns
Entertainment

2 Guns Review

William McPherson2 Comments

The following introduction is a little spoilery, but it doesn’t really reveal anything that will compromise enjoyment of the movie in my opinion, but anyway, read at your own risk, or simply skip down to the next one. Denzel Washington stars as undercover DEA agent Robert "Bobby" Trench, while Mark Wahlberg plays undercover Naval Intelligence officer Michael "Stig" Stigman. Together the two of them plot to rob a bank in which they think contains money belonging to a Mexican drug cartel that…

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Entertainment

Pain & Gain Review

William McPherson2 Comments

The great movie ‘Fargo’ has forever strained my ability to trust any movie that claims itself to be a “true story”. Fargo did that in its opening credits as an inside joke on the audience (one that, according to legend actually inspired a person to go searching for the lost money in that story). The story of Fargo was completely fictional, but indeed, it was truly a story if you catch my drift. Pain and Gain though is not just “truly a story” though it is, according to everything I’ve been able…

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Kiss The Girls
Entertainment

Kiss The Girls Review

Gary Smith2 Comments

After his niece is abducted, criminal psychologist Dr. Alex Cross (Freeman) goes to North Carolina to aid/follow the investigation. What he learns is that his niece, Naomi, is the latest “trophy” of a man who calls himself “Casanova,” a man who collects women, but not necessarily for the purposes of killing them. Shortly after Casanova takes Naomi, a medical intern, Dr. Kate McTiernan (Judd), is taken. McTiernan is able to escape the clutches of the self-proclaimed greatest lover though, and…

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