The Covenant (2023)

Master Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) was in charge of a squad of men who scoured Afghanistan for weapons caches.  They might be operating as a checkpoint on a road, patrolling through towns, or even going to remote sites to investigate.  Of course, they needed an interpreter.  The last one having died, Kinley hired a new one, Ahmed (Dar Salim).  Their working relationship was soon strained as Ahmed frequently made decisions contrary to Kinley's instructions.  However, that this tended to achieve the stated goal kept Ahmed on the payroll.  That he saved the team from an ambush also added to his value.  During one interaction with a local source, the team learned of a weapons cache in the hinterlands.  They set out.  Though the operation went well initially, wave after wave of reinforcements attacked while the team awaited support.  Kinley and Ahmed found themselves separated alone in the Afghan wilderness and unable to call for support.  Could they get back to base before the Taliban found them?

The movie is told in three parts.  It starts with Kinley and his team operating in Afghanistan.  After the fight at the remote weapons store, it becomes a survival story with Kinley and Ahmed fleeing Taliban pursuit.  The final part sees Kinley trying to get a visa for Ahmed so he can be extracted from an increasingly hostile Afghanistan

The movie has some good action scenes and certainly has some tense moments, but it is mostly dull.  That the two main characters don't get along is important as far as the overall story but makes the pair less fun to watch.  Their conflict isn't the buddy cop humor arguments, but just oil and water not mixing.  Toward the end they have mutual respect and some light moments, but it's a long slog to get there.

Just okay.  Obviously, Guy Ritchie or Gyllenhaal fans should see it, but otherwise this is skip.

End of Watch (2012)

Los Angeles Police Officers Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Zavala (Michael Pena) were in hot pursuit.  Suddenly, the car they are chasing crashed into a fence.  The suspects jumped out and opened fire.  Taylor and Zavala shoot back, killing the suspects.  Back at the police station, Taylor filmed himself while getting ready for the day.  He was taking classes for law but chose filmmaking as an elective.  As such, he has a camcorder with him most of the time.  The two officers have only just returned to duty; it is SOP for officers involved in a shooting to be taken out of rotation while the incident is reviewed.  It is clear that Taylor and Zavala are the hotshots of the department.  The story follows them, much of it viewed from Taylor's camcorder or the bodycams on the officers.

This is like a long episode of Adam 12 with a lot more gunfire and profanity.  Beyond the comradery of the two cops, the story follows their relationships as well.  Taylor and his new girlfriend, Janet (Anna Kendrick), get the most attention.  There are also the ongoing clashes with a brutal and violent drug cartel that has expanded into L.A.  The movie is at sometimes light and fun but also has extremely dark and violent moments.

Good popcorn fun.  Recommended.

Road House (2024)

Frankie (Jessica Williams) arrives at an arena where two men are having a bare knuckles brawl, a poor man's UFC fight.  She needs a fighter.  In walks Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal).  The victor of the previous fight throws in the towel rather than fight Dalton.  Clearly, he is the man to hire.  He declines.  Instead, he ponders suicide by parking on a railroad track.  He opts against that too.  Dalton arrived in the Florida Keys to accept Frankie's offer.  He moved into a crocodile-haunted boat at the dock and cleaned out the riffraff from the bar.  However, the riffraff proved to be tenacious and increased despite Dalton's success.  Eventually, Knox (Conor McGregor) arrived to force Frankie to sell the Road House.

Dalton is a pleasant fellow and shows concern for those he is about to pummel.  Before trouncing a band of ruffians, he made sure there was a hospital nearby.  In fact, he drove them to the hospital.  Violence is a last resort.  He has a lot of experience with violence.  He is a former UFC Champion.  Gyllenhaal is good in the role.

Conor McGregor goes over the top in every scene.  Knox doesn't use brakes; he crashes to come to a stop.  He crashed a sports car into motorcycles, another car into a tree, and a truck into the Road House.  Does he have a driver's license?  Doubtful.  He has crazy eyes and an overexaggerated swagger when he walks.  He dialed it up to 11 whenever he was on screen.  For a minion, he caused his employer more trouble than he was worth.

The movie has its moments.  It also has a lot of plot holes.  Why would a UFC fighter know how to build a remote-activated bomb?  Does Charlie give every random guy who gets off the bus a copy of her book about Fred the Tree?  Why didn't Frankie mention that there were offers to buy the Road House?  The reason she needs a serious bouncer is kept secret from the bouncer.  What kind of idiot demands to be shaved with a straight razor on a boat on choppy water?  That was a terrible introduction for the villain, painting him as a blowhard dork.  He never recovers.

Just okay.

The Sisters Brothers (2018)

It is Oregon in 1851.  Eli (John C Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix) are hired guns.  Having just returned to Oregon City after a job, their employer sends them on a new mission: track down Hermann Warm (Riz Ahmed), extract information from him, then kill him.  To help in this task, John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) had already been dispatched to trail Warm.  Morris is only a scout, not a gunman.  The brothers find themselves traveling into California and the Gold Rush.  Warm is a chemist who has a particular formula for extracting gold.

The movie is mostly concerned with the relationships of Eli and Charlie and, to a lesser extent, Morris and Warm.  Charlie, though younger, is the driving force of the brothers.  Where Eli is ready to try something different, Charlie is ambitious to replace their employer.  Where Eli would walk away, Charlie is eager for a fight.  By contrast, Morris and Warm talk about building an ideal society that would purge violence.

Where most Westerns would just have everyone with bandoliers of bullets and random revolvers, this production was true to the period and armed them with cap and ball revolvers.  Reloading is shown repeatedly as the brothers disassemble their guns to slide a fresh cylinder into place.

It feels longer than its 2-hour runtime.  At times, the filmmakers add scenes that further detail the time and place, but don't advance the story.  What is the point of staying at the fine hotel and seeing a flush toilet.  That's probably a bit early for a flush toilet.  Then there were all the discarded items on the beach.  In fact, during the Gold Rush, lots of items were abandoned on the trail.  However, this is not explained and one might think this was just evidence of a shipwreck.  It was also surprising to see Rutger Hauer appear in a non-speaking role.

With such a ludicrous title, I had expected some humor.  Nope.  Very few laughs to be found here.  Just okay.

Life

A soil sample from Mars has been recovered and brought back to the International Space Station (ISS) where a noted biologist, Dr. Hugh Derry, will investigate.  A dormant cell is found which Derry awakens with some warmth and a glucose bath.  This new life form, named Calvin, grows quickly and has impressive qualities.  The cell walls are unusually thick and each cell possesses attributes of nerve cells and muscle cells.

The astronauts, all highly educated and trained, prove to be incredibly dense.  Worse, most of them have no idea of the protocols should the experiment go badly.  When Calvin escaped the incubator, the lab was sealed but some fool opened the door to try to save Dr. Derry, which leads to Calvin escaping the lab.  Wonderful.  Somehow in the fire suppressant system, Calvin worms its way into the communications array and disables it.  "Houston, we cannot tell you what is happening because we have no backup communications system."  Really?  When a Russian ship arrives to shove the infected space station into deep space, only one crewman actually knows that was the protocol.  Because he doesn't know, another crew disrupts and effectively sabotages the effort.  Maybe Commander Golovkina could have told everyone about the protocols after Calvin escaped.  Apparently, the only people who knew were Golovkina and Dr. North, who likewise failed to inform anyone until the Russians showed up.  Stupid beyond belief.  It turns out there are two escape pods on the space station, each capable of transporting 1 astronaut.  Really?  Crew of 6 and lifeboats for 2?  Is this the Titanic in space?  And why don't the lifeboats have communications?  All capsules have communications and should have served as one possible backup for the failed communications array.

 

The makers really needed to decide on the abilities of Calvin.  At one point, Calvin wanders around the exterior of ISS, generally unconcerned by the vacuum of space.  However, the crew later depressurize much of the space station with the expectation that it will force Calvin into dormancy.  Calvin feeds on the organic life forms on the ship and yet is somehow composed of something far tougher.  How does Calvin survive unscathed from a flame thrower or being in the nozzle of a rocket when it fires.  Even if it survives the 5,000+ degrees of heat from the rocket, how does it not get fired like a cannonball into space from a thrust that is changing the orbit of 500 ton space station?  How is it that the rocket nozzle somehow leads into the interior of the station?  That makes no sense.  Calvin seems to be all-knowing and all-seeing with an intuitive sense for modern technology.  Of note, in the weeks that Dr. Derry spent studying the growing Calvin, he apparently learned nothing.  No biopsies to test what chemicals might harm or help, no deeper analysis of cell structure or maybe genetic code.  Nope, he just played patty cake with it until it attacked him.  Genius!  You know, when the alien germ starts crawling out of the Petri dish, it's time to stop feeding it.

 

Dr. Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) proves to be the biggest fool on the space station, a man who played with fire until it burned him then sabotaged efforts to put the fire out.  "It doesn't hate us, it just wants to live."  Who picked this guy to study the alien?

 

Commander Ekaterina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya) is fully aware of the protocols should Calvin get out of the lab.  Calvin is out of the lab.  Her first order of business should be to inform the rest of the crew that they are all already dead.  No, I think I'll go on a spacewalk to see why the communications array is down.

 

Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds) is the mechanic, the guy who maintains and fixes all the parts of the ISS.  He has the right attitude in most things except keeping the quarantine.  The moment Calvin gets hostile, Rory wants to kill it.  All his efforts to do so inexplicably fail because Calvin is fireproof.

 

Sho Murakami (Hiroyuki Sanada) is a technician like Rory but forgot to pack his Samurai sword.  His job is to let everyone know what system Calvin has broken and the state of the ISS orbit, usually decaying.

 

Dr. David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the medical officer.  He is something of a misanthrope, having spent more than a year in space because he hates what people do to each other on earth.  Okay, yet another crewman with psychological issues.  Like most of the crew, he is more concerned with saving his crewmates than containing the doom of humanity virus.

 

Dr. Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson) is from the CDC and was involved in determining the protocols for containing the Mars specimens.  She knew what would happen if they lost containment but never bothered to tell anyone.  "Hey, Rory, if you open that door we will all be shoved into deep space.  You really want to open that door?"  Nah, she didn't need to say anything.  I'm sure it will be fine.

 

Not considered by the last of the astronauts was that Calvin started as a single cell and, since escaping, has traversed the ISS multiple times.  How many single cells may have been scattered in Calvin's wake and stuck to astronauts, waiting for a glucose bath?  No one can leave, which is something Dr. North should have known.

 

The movie is light on science and heavy on the fiction.  The look of the movie is great but the story is atrocious.  Skip this one.

Nocturnal Animals

The movie opens with a quartet of fat to very fat women dancing naked.  When the opening credits finish, it turns out that this is a art exhibit and some very realistic sculptures of the dancing naked women are sprawled on platforms while the dancing versions play on large screens on the wall.  The architect of this 'art' show is Susan (Amy Adams).  Susan is in a loveless marriage with Hutton (Armie Hammer), her second husband.  The morning after her show, a manuscript from her first husband arrives.  Susan starts reading and is immediately engrossed by the tale of Tony.

 

Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal) is driving with his wife (Isla Fisher) and daughter to Marfa, Texas in the middle of the night when he is forced off the road by a trio of hooligans led by Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).  The confrontation leads to Tony in one car while his wife and daughter are driven off in the other.  Shortly thereafter he is abandoned in the desert.  Hiking back to the highway, he is interviewed by Officer Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon), who becomes his ally in tracking down his family.

 

The book has parallels to Susan and Edward's marriage and breakup.  Their relationship is loosely explored via flashbacks.  Interestingly, Edward is portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, demonstrating that she identified Tony as Edward.  Susan is deeply affected by the book, often setting it down in the midst of some particularly unpleasant passages.  The linking of the book with her first marriage provides a mystery quality to the film.  Incidents in the book may or may not reflect incidents in their marriage.  The ambiguous ending allows the viewer to decide what it all means.

 

Not for everyone but I enjoyed it.  Well, except for that opening bit.