Movie Review: Shelter

The latest Jason Statham January action movie is called "Shelter," and it has all the ingredients of a typical Statham January quality movie. A man, Mason, living alone in an abandoned lighthouse with his dog, receives ongoing deliveries from a young girl, Jessie, played by Bodhi Rae Breathnach. Then there is a major storm, and Jessie almost drowns before being rescued by Mason. The remaining story is how their friendship grows, and while they are chased by agents of MI6, who have been after Mason for years after he failed to follow orders to assassinate a target, instead following his conscience to do the right thing.

The problem with this movie is that it represents nothing we have not seen many times before, no new idea, the same expected Statham action scenes where he easily defeats any number of enemies trying to kill him - another thing we have all seen way too often.

Actor Bill Nighy (he has no character name on IMDB) plays a high-ranking MI6 agent who was in charge of a special forces group, where Mason was the best agent. This is about the same idea behind all of the Matt Damon "Jason Bourne" movies, "including "a former high performing agent is running for his life from people trying to kill him and his female partner". Unfortunately, this movie plays almost like a poor man's Jason Bourne screenplay, this time with a young girl rather than a grown woman. This is another example of an average to below-average "January movie", where it is just released to try and recover some of the production costs of a finished production that ordinarily would be shelved and lost money.

The Rotten Tomatoes reviews for this film are a below-average 64% rating, and I agree with this rating and recommend this movie only for the most die-hard Jason Statham fans. For the rest of us, save your money.

Movie Review: Send Help

The new movie "Send Help" at the start is all about the way too many unfortunate millions of us have to suffer as we have to make a living to buy food and shelter. The massive injustice, abuse, and disrespect some of us have to endure from a bad boss or deranged co-workers are some of the worst parts of making a living.

This movie reminded me of "The Devil Wears Prada", released in 2006, which shows the abuse so many of us have to live through because we have no leverage. When someone else has the power to take away our income, we have to hold back our anger to avoid being fired. Dealing with a bad boss and abusive co-worker(s) is one of the greatest sources of extreme stress in our lives.

Send Help is the first movie I have ever seen that attempts to "turn the tables" on the abusive boss, and the back stabbling, credit taking co-workers, with an inspired and brilliant story idea that involves a private jet crashing on a deserted island where the abused employee Linda Liddle, played by Rachel McAdams tries to survive on an island with her scumbag boss, Bradley Preston, played by Dylan O'Brien. The scenes of the Jet decompressing and falling apart in mid-air and the crash on the deserted island are as good as the movie Cast Away starring Tom Hanks, released in 2000.

Linda Liddle is an employee of a financial company where the CEO recently died and his son, Bradly Preston takes over the company. Even though Linda is far and away the most brilliant and hard-working employee in the company, she does not dress or have the personality of the other employees, and because of this, she is disrespected and denied a Vice President position in the company after seven years in favor of a new employee who has been with the company for only 6 months. How many times in our lives have we been the victim of or witness to injustice like this? When something like this happens to any good person, regardless of how hard they worked and how much they deserve fair treatment, far too often, there is nothing that can be done to correct the injustice.

The scenes on the deserted island are at times extremely bloody and violent (one scene where Linda kills a wild boar), some are completely insane, one scene is both unexpected and stupid, and the ending, due to its craziness, is impossible to predict. The relationship between Laura and Bradly is at first very combative and rude, and later turns into an unexpected impromptu friendship, within the ongoing attempts to create twists and turns in this insane story. I was reminded of the famous quote, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” — Maya Angelou. This is a truth that holds regardless of any extreme circumstance.

This is the first horror/drama/action movie that Rachel McAdams has starred in; her performance is both very well done and impressive expecially with many of the action scenes. Dylan O'Brien is also very good in this role, along with his evil laugh, playing a narcissistic, disgusting person who has no business being in charge of other people.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are an extremely high 92%, I agree with this and highly recommend this film.

Movie Review: Mercy

There is a term well known to experienced moviegoers, known as "A January Movie", where production companies have stored movies that have been marked as either low quality, unlikely to make money, or too bad to even release, and have been shelved. January is the time of year when these movies are dumped in movie theaters in an attempt to at least make some of the money back that has already been booked as a financial loss because of a low-quality film idea that just did not work.

The new movie "Mercy" is a great example of a January movie and stars Chris Pratt as police officer Chris Raven and Rebecca Ferguson, who plays an AI Judge named Judge Maddox. In this story, Chris Raven is on trial in front of an AI judge, trying to prove that he is innocent of killing his wife, and he has only 90 minutes. If Raven fails to prove himself innocent, he is immediately put to death.

This entire movie has Chris Raven tied to a chair, sitting in front of Judge Maddox, with hundreds of different videos shown around them in a darkened room. The first thing that you realize is how much money must have been saved producing this film because there is no reason for movie sets or high-quality action scenes - just snippets of low-grade videos. This film was probably greenlighted despite the B-movie script because of a money decision where Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson would make enough box office because the production costs are so low. While the futuristic idea is a good one, with AI taking over the legal system in this country, unfortunately, this screenplay is not up to the task of successfully bringing this idea home.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are a very low and correct 22%. I agree with this rating and rank this movie as a big-time January movie miss.