I can't even put into words my distaste for this movie. Only Americans will ask you to feel bad for their war criminals. The quote by Frankie Boyle describes this film perfectly, “Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, they’ll come back twenty years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.” The whole point of The Card Counter is to try to get you to sympathize with a war criminal who tortured, killed, terrorized people. Not only that but it's extremely unrealistic to ask the viewer to believe that anyone responsible for Abu Ghraib faced meaningful consequences. Like, come on, now!
This movie followed the most boring protagonists, who are as dull as they can get. Zero chemistry between any member of the cast. Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, and Tye Sheridan are basically in 3 different movies and each one of them is total garbage:
"Abu Ghraib torturer, but make him seeeexy" How? Oh, cast hot actor with beautiful eyes. Plus, he did his time, 8 years for the most vile crimes you can possibly imagine. But he is a good guy now. He fucks girls and support college kids. For someone I guess we're supposed to dislike (?), the movie spends a lot of time showing how cool he is.
Tiffany Haddish must’ve been the only actress to audition for the role of La Linda because she was radically miscast. She is not ready for dramatic acting. As for her character – she is independent and has connections with rich folks … that’s it. Wow, so interesting, right?! The 'chemistry' between her and Isaac was weird. It wasn’t seductive, it just felt like watching high schoolers flirt, but even more painful.
Cirk seemed like he is dumb as rocks. To expect us to care so much about a kid who we don't even know is irresponsible. I couldn't care less about his death or revenge killing.
Oh, and there is another character introduced like "USA!" guy with no point. But he was born in Ukraine, so he is not American. Oscar Isaac was born in Guatemala, grew up in USA and plays an American dude, while people born in Ukraine who grew up in USA are only Ukrainian. Even if you want to follow American rules, you just can’t because the Yanks are very inconsistent and hypocritical.
Most bad movies have some redeeming qualities. I can’t think of anything with this, everything just felt so bland to me:
Nothing is happening, and the movie is sooo repetitive . Oscar Isaac looking serious and walking in a casino,with suspenseful music - this is like 80% of the movie.
Almost every scene is an end in itself, nothing is explored, and doesn’t progress the story at all scene to scene.
The music. Oh, the music, which mainly featured vapid, brooding indie/electronic songs, is just all over the place here. I hated it!
There is basically no concept of tension or mystery, which is pretty important when you’re watching a fake game of poker.
The philosophy was so juvenile, and the movie lacks anything interesting to say. We are supposed to believe the main character is very mysterious and smart but he is one of the most boring, dull and flat characters I have ever seen.
The dialogue is godawful, no exaggeration here! "I have no goals", "Have you ever read a book", "What is your story" etc. It felt so awkward and as if the characters aren’t even talking to each other.
Why is it called The Card Counter when the main character counted cards once onscreen and then spends the entire movie playing poker?
Did I see a different movie than all of these people rating it high?
Whoooo Doggy.
This'll probably be the last place I explain this but I used to be one of those guys who hated Megan Fox. I refused to watch Jennifer's Body in part because of that (and in part because it looked TERRIBLE, in retrospect of course it was a Spring Breakers level of reversal). That said I watched Jennifer's Body and as I said in that review it blew. me. away. With how excellent and funny and interesting it was. Between that and Lindsey Ellis' video on Megan Fox in Transformers[2] and that video with Jimmy Kimmel coming around yet again only this time it finally clicked. I've basically done a 90 degree turn on Fox. I'm basically neutral. I'm perfectly willing to accept her as an actress in movies I want to see. I've been rather eager to see what she does next.
Then I heard about Rogue. At first I hear she was leading a mercenary crew to rescue yada yada yada and honestly I didn't like it. Fox is still a petite, super attractive woman. I'm actually perfectly willing to see her in an action role even one where she isn't a sexy demon beast or whatever but this is one of the few roles I wouldn't have picked for her.
Then I saw the trailer and it was basically everything I was worried about. She's like a model in fatigues. But hey I've definitely watched much much much worst movies for less. I figured I'd give it a shot.
Honestly the first thing I compare Rogue to is Hustlers. Hustlers was a movie about strippers from the strippers perspective that was so well crafted, so well written and acted and framed that even in a movie that gave me Jennifer Lopez looking like she's at the top of her game oozing sex in a way that for whatever reason didn't come off cheap. Popped Lizzo's big girl behind in a thong throwing all that weight around. It's a fantastic movie. Just good film making. And in spite of that I never for one second buy in that Constance Wu the main character is a stripper. She screams it in literally every scene she's in... not a stripper. Someone pretending to be a stripper. And yet.... I don't care. It never bothered me. I never saw her as a stripper but the movie is so good I never needed to.
Rogue is kinda like that, but in reverse. Rogue is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. I will watch this movie again just so I can point out all the stupid insane dumb things that happen CinemaSins style. None of these characters make sense. From the moment they casually tossed one of their own mercenaries out of a moving car when he got killed to when it happened literally twice. The bad guys[1] are just SO dedicated to hunting these three girls that no matter how many of them die, they're still running guns up to die. The hostages who were literally kidnapped from school, beaten (but not raped?) and kept in cages and pick the worst battles in history. In the middle of an escape one refuses to wade into a river crying about how she needs a break. Do you not understand what they're going to do if they catch you? Everyone else went across the calf deep water why would you demand to stop? Of course the movie tries to justify this by having her actually get eaten by a gator but gator would have left her along if she was with the group and thematically doesn't make any sense to the themes of the movie. When one of the mercs is bleeding they demand to know what's going on in full Karen effect. Ladies you're teenagers not medics. You don't even know or like him why would you get to know what's going on with his triage? They don't trust the man who saved their life because he admits he used to work for the bad guy. Everyone is just SO STUPID. I haven't seen this level of stupidity since Avenue 5 which is a hilarious comedy about a Space Gilligan's Island with one intelligent person and a shipfull of people at 3 different levels of stupid. It's worth watching for that one episode alone. It's so macabre and funny.
And yet, my worries about Megan Fox were justified. She can't pull off military gunner that well. She doesn't have the body for it. That said she tries. She's the only character who actually seems like she's taking anything seriously. There's an unnecessary "she's a GIRL?!? and military!??!?" dialog at some points. It serves no purpose the movie isn't about her being a girl with a gun. There's no reason for anyone to not trust her character's bona fides as the leader of this mercenary group. But again Megan Fox showed up on set to WORK. She goes seriously, not overly cheesy but with some snark when needed. She can relate to her men without trying to "be one of the guys". She's not one of the guys. She's the boss and she acts like it. She gives orders well, she controls the rescuees well. Megan Fox is the only one in this movie that makes any sense. It's a shame the movie can't manage to warp around her. Everything else BUT her is so bad including the closing tag trying to tell us that captive lions are an issue which has nothing to do with the plot and most will call hypocritical in light of the real lions used (at the end) of the film.
Rogue is a bad bad movie but it does still leave me interested in what Megan Fox does next.
[1] (hmm actually at one point they DO suggest an amount of religious zealotry)
[2] Framing Megan Fox: Feminist Theory Part 3 | The Whole Plate: Episode 7 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKyrUMUervU]. Highly recommend it completely changed my perspective on the characters in Transformers. It's still a terrible movie but wow apparently for that first one the writers were at least trying and Michael Bay really went hard ruining it.
I can say I've seen it. I can say I laughed uproariously. Because holy wow is this movie awful. Front to back, start to finish. It's so bad you sometimes forget it's offensive too. On purpose.
One of the first gags is that after failing to inspire his new youth male team. He dismisses them reminding them not to steal his catalytic converter. After being called out for it by the black player. The black player drops a saw used to steal catalytic converts. In the next scene he doesn't have a catalytic converter.
There's not so much acting as there is setting up punchlines whether they're awful verbal jokes or pointless (and often too long) visual gag montages. I was going to say something about the imitation indie music and wanna be Karate Kid soundtrack but the credits were still rolling and the song section came up. All the songs are by William Boreing. I don't know if that's Jeremy's son or whatever nepotism nonsense but the music was uninteresting. It wasn't sonic garbage just... boring.
You could spend an hour debunking all the nonsense assumptions the movie makes erroneously. But for my money even from a conservative Daily Wire standpoint most of the movie is just dumb and pointless which is a problem because the movie's only saving grace is supposed to be it's messaging. It's like a Christian Faith movie in that way. Christian Faith movies are awful but they're awful because they don't care about anything other than sending the right message. The art of storytelling doesn't come into it. The only one that matters is the root story. That a team of men's washouts could dominate in women's sports. Ironically basketball is a poor choice for this because the gender differences aren't THAT big. And physical mass isn't everything like you see in the movie. Not when you're playing comparable teams. The women's teams are practiced active teams and our ladyballer are again some washouts who are hanging out just to do this. It's so casually done you never see them practice which is both a reflection of how much this isn't a sports movie and a reflection of what the movie thinks about female players. You see what it thinks at the end of the movie when it has grown bulked out basketball players playing with girl-children.
No one expects a vanity project to be perfect. But just because it's a vanity project doesn't mean you get to by pass every narrative concept. Me, You, Madness is awful. This is worse. But that one PRESENTS as a vanity project. This presents as a movie with something to tell through humor. It's not JUST lazy. It's not JUST offensive. It's not funny either. There's just scenes that you know the DW found funny. Scenes that they were dying laughing while they were writing it. But in the end on the movie are just... "ehh oh i see what they were trying to do".
Just as confusing as the first time I saw it only now I understand why I'm so confused. If foldableideas's Dan Olson ever gets back to film discussion I hope he talks about the editing in this movie. It's atrocious. Every time Lantern fights Hector. There's no motivation behind it. It's actually what breaks the movie. The movie is going along mostly well until Hal fights Hector the first time. It's not motivated. It's unclear why Hal is there. It's unclear how much Hal knows about what's going on.
I did think it was funny when Carol pointed out that as someone who knows Hal their entire life they recognize him in a mask. It's amusing but the mask identity is there for a reason narratively. People like to laugh at it but storywise it has a purpose and when you break that for a joke it does things like make HvH 1 feel stupid. If Carol can recognize him why can't Hector? Hector has spent his entire life wanting to be Hal, knowing Hal and yet when Hal puts on a mask .... Hector sees nothing.
Likewise it's never clear if Hal knows that Hector is the mutated creature. It's confusing and literally everything in the movie after this scene stops making sense. All the way to the post credit scene where Sinestro puts on the yellow ring. I remember being pumped for that but watching it again it doesn't make sense. WHY would Sinestro do it? We've seen nothing to motivate him. We see what motivates him to CREATE the ring but by the time he's wearing it.... why? Might as well ask why HvH 2 fight happens because that again is a scenario when Hal knows nothing, gained nothing and yet goes straight to a fight that was also a trap?
The biggest problem with the movie is the CGI. "CGI" ruins almost every movie that comes out now and it does the same here for the same reasons. All CGI scenes have to be dark. OA is a planet permanently 2 hours past dusk. Why? They have so much power and zero lighting. But what's special about Green Lantern is that rather than give him a suit to wear they put him in a CGI costume and THAT was the worst decision. Because they couldn't do it. Whether money or time it couldn't be done and what remains looks AWFUL. It's like every TV show that doesn't use squibs and instead they just color the film red where the bullethole is supposed to be. The mask looks like a slightly better version of that but it IS a version of that and you can tell. It's almost as distracting and almost never seeing a closeup of his full suit.
It's a shame to utterly junk Ryan Reynolds in a perfect made for him role. With better writing he could have been the Robert Downy Jr as Iron Man of casting. Almost. I mean you'll never find casting THAT good again for a superhero movie but Ryan as Hal could have been close.
The movie just spends too much effort on too much story. Hector Hammond doesn't serve any purpose. He would have been a great sequel antagonist with Sinestro or without him. Parallax doesn't have enough story meaning you don't know what it's motivation and goals are. The Lantern Corps could have used a touch more to do but honestly if it had looked better it wouldn't have mattered. I think Hal's drunk driving story would have been a better first shot. Really sink home the "responsibility" angle.
It says something about how bad act III is that all the way up until Hal busts in on Hector almost 75% of the way through the movie and I would have rated it above average. Probably just a six but still. But on top of the throughout issues everything that happens STARTING with the first HvH fight is just so awful and non stop floating dominoes that it drags the entire movie down to my current rating which is 3.
I think there was a lot of potential in this. I think this movie took bad choices (as a film) but even with the choices they took there was potential. For instance I actually think it's kinda brilliant how they pull out of the time loop with a change in weather unexpectedly. I think it was performed WELL. I think it was kinda pointless but as a function of the story it works.
I was hoping that Michael would be redeemed. I think this could have been an interesting variation on the time loop genre where you're stuck in a time loop with someone you don't like. Not like an enemies to lovers situation which has been done to death but someone you actively don't like. It could have been fun it could have explored social responsibility. They could have taken this ostensibly evil character and turned him good using a morality that only applies to people who are functionally above the law.
But the movie didn't really do much. It didn't really SIT in the time loop. Like Groundhog Day for instance really saturates itself into the loop. Even fun goofy romps like Boss Level really luxuriate IN the loop really having a good time. Letting you feel the character in the loop. Here we don't spend much time exploring the loop. Maybe they want to argue we already understand the potential of the loop so we don't need to see it. Heck even the characters already understand the concept and jump two chapters ahead. Honestly they figure it out way too fast in my opinion.
But it could have been more. It could have been something special instead contrary to the description this is the story of one dude trapped in a loop with his love interest and his id manifest into a fellow addict.
