2004 Layer Cake XXXX
This is a really good movie. It’s about a drug dealer (Craig/XXXX) who’s made his “magic” number as to money, and is planning on getting out. However upper management has other ideas. He’s given the task of finding the run away daughter of a guy further up in the food chain. Complication; another drug dealer has used his name in fucking up a deal. Now there’s a hit man after him. He also falls in lust. My, his plate is full.
Craig’s acting is great, as is the story. The look on Craig’s face when the hit man almost nails him, and XXXX (Craig), realizes the trap he has sprung is backfiring is awesome. There’s also some phone sex, and it’s fun to watch Craig squirm in a public setting.
2004 Enduring Love Joe
Okay, this is another movie where it feels a bit strange. The opening and closing scenes are great, it’s the middle part that feels . . . unconnected. Essentially, the story is this, Joe’s on a picnic with his girl friend, a hot air balloon touches down and runs into trouble. Joe and others try to help, one man dies. One of the others, a man, falls in love with Joe and stalks him.
The middle part is about the stalking, basically a series of scenes of Joe discovering the stalker over and over, and reacting increasingly fearfully and angrily towards the stalker. While this is going on, in an emotional reaction, he totally damages his relationship with his girlfriend, by telling her (and everyone else), that love isn’t real, and it’s just biology.
The stalker realizes that he’s never going to get Joe while the girlfriend is around , beats himself up, and goes to her and tells her Joe did it to him. Joe comes home, and finds the stalker and his girlfriend together in the apartment, and the stalker once again tries to tell Joe how they are meant to be together and that it’s the girl friend that’s the problem. And then the stalker stabs her. Joe immediately realizes how much he loves her and employs guile to save her. He tells the stalker he’s right, the girlfriend was the problem and now they can be together. Joe lures him over and gets the knife away from him while KISSING (alas, apparently no frenching) him, and stabs him in the gut. “Aagh,” moans the stalker as he falls out of sight and out of the movie.
The rest of the movie is about Joe trying to make things right for all the people he hurt while freaking out about the stalking.
The acting is good; it’s the storyline in the middle that’s the problem. It’s completely shot from the perspective of Joe discovering the stalker over and over again; there are no scenes to show how the stalker was finding him.
But I liked this movie and would like to see it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment