SNATCHED Review

If Snatched is what you expect it to be is that necessarily a good thing? Probably not, but if it's better than you expected does that make it a good movie or, just, not a terrible one? It's a tough line to walk and an even more difficult one to decipher, but at the end of the day it can't help but to feel as if Snatched, overall, is more of a missed opportunity than a success by the standards of its genre tropes. Missed opportunity due to the fact that not only was it written by a single screenwriter in Katie Dippold (The Heat, Ghostbusters) and directed by Jonathan Levine (50/50, Warm Bodies), but that it also stars one of the world's most popular stand-up comedians (like it or not) while being able to pull seventy-one year old Goldie Hawn out of a fifteen year semi-retirement. If one is able to rope in a comedic legend like Hawn for your project one might imagine that individual or team would utilize her and her talents to their greatest effect, but in Snatched it seems Levine and everyone around him were afraid to ask Hawn to do anything too uncomfortable and instead kept her tasks in as safe and as easy a box as possible. This only stands to resort the movie to Hawn playing an overly-cautious mother figure while Amy Schumer is the irresponsible, narcissist of a daughter that exemplifies every negative stereotype one could come up with about millennials and then throws them into a hostage situation where balance in the two competing personalities is supposed to be found. Alas, that is what the movie goes for, but none of it ever feels natural or authentic, but rather very much like a movie. Everything about Snatched is very movie-like and while that isn't always a bad thing, especially when as much is intentional, this technique only bodes well for Snatched part of the time and most of that time is when the film is actually being funny. In short, when the film owns up to its promise and delivers on the capabilities of its talented cast and creative teams, but more often than not Snatched feels like a given of a movie where, after it was decided Schumer and Hawn would play a bickering mother/daughter pair, the rest was left up to that chemistry to make the ship sail successfully. Schumer and Hawn more anchor the film than anything though; holding the antics steady despite the fact the ship itself hasn't been that well-constructed.

HANDS OF STONE Review

More than anything Hands of Stone is frustrating because there is clearly a large scale to the film and real ambition from both writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz and the entire cast, but as is true with many a biopics Hands of Stone tries to do and tell its audience too much in too short a time span inadvertently making the film more about a series of events than the characters participating in those events. In theory this is supposed to be a movie about the relationship between Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán (Edgar Ramírez) and legendary trainer Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro) and while this goal is communicated well enough and understood there are so many extraneous things going on around the two central characters the film becomes distracted by its own plot strands. The word I'm looking for is "scattershot." Hands of Stone is a broad strokes approach to the biopic, but in being so it communicates such key elements in haphazard ways thus forcing the audience to not invest as much as they should or even want to. Granted, the film does certain things right as this viewer in particular had no prior knowledge of Durán or his story yet I was immediately interested in the real life events the film was depicting. That is all to say the film is a little all over the place. This especially becomes true after the film effortlessly builds to Durán's first bout with Sugar Ray Leonard (Usher Raymond) and completes that fight within the first hour of the film. While the film could have certainly told us all we needed to know about Durán through the lens of his Sugar Ray fights and all of the drama those entailed Hands of Stone instead feels the need to go further by not only telling us Durán's story as a boxer, but his story as a Panamanian activist, Arcel's story that deals with the New York City mob and a long-lost daughter even going as far to include Leonard's perspective on certain things. Add in the familial drama that Durán creates and deals in with wife Felicidad Iglesias (Ana de Armas) and their five children and there is enough material here for an HBO miniseries. Unfortunately, Hands of Stone is a feature film that clocks in under two hours and while it carries real momentum in the first hour leading up to that first showdown with Sugar Ray that energy is largely lost in the second half of the film leaving us with a movie that might have been something really special and unique did it not try so desperately to adhere to the worn-out sports drama template.

THE SHALLOWS Review

The Shallows is just about what one would expect from a film about a pretty girl getting stranded on a rock as she is threatened by the ominous presence of a great white shark. The film is both a contained bit of biting tension while at the same time relaying little more than schlocky fun. What allows the film to transcend its rather simple and sometimes inferior qualities when compared to the big budget fare it faces during the summer months and become more of what a horror or action auteur might have produced in their early, limited budget days is the combination of both Blake Lively's performance and the sharp, concise direction of Jaume Collet-Serra (Non-Stop, Run All Night). Sure, The Shallows is ultimately a forgettable movie that will stand to leave no lasting impression and may even be disappointing to those who walk in expecting more action and less mood, but considering what the film clearly sets out to accomplish from the get-go it fulfills its goals pretty effortlessly in that Collet-Serra uses the stripped down screenplay from Anthony Jaswinski (Vanishing on 7th Street) as a way to find interesting ways to convey the story. The outline is familiar and the beats we hit are expected, but it is the way Collet-Serra slyly introduces the context of our protagonist's situation and her background that might allow some of the more necessary things that need to be done when under attack by a shark get accomplished. It is the way in which the parts we know are going to happen are so seamlessly set-up that allow us to, despite knowing what is coming, still be surprised when those moments do in fact occur. All of this is to say that while on its most basic of principles The Shallows should be nothing more than a B-movie in the vein of something that goes direct to DVD it is by virtue of the talent involved that it has become more than that: a thoroughly entertaining thrill ride made credible by Lively's presence and made to look like that of a higher class of story by Collet-Serra's inherent ability to add real tension and stakes in an otherwise throwaway narrative.