We’ve all been there. We’re in the middle of extra-legal incursion into a foreign country, we’ve been shot, we’re bleeding out, not long for this world. Our old friend cradles our head as we take our last breath, and we use these last moments on this mortal coil to utter our final words…and we make a joke about our dick size. This has happened to all of us, right? No? Hmm. Well, this happens in Long Gone Heroes, to a significant character, late in the game when this should carry substantial weight, and it really nails the mentality of this movie.
We’re barely into 2024 and so far, the new movie releases have twice returned to the guy-with-a-mundane-job-who-used-to-be-a-government-agent well. First came Renny Harlin’s The Bricklayer and now star Jason Statham and director David Ayer have thrown their hat into the ring with The Beekeeper. (The Custodian feels the obvious next step.) Bigger, badder, and wilder than the Harlin joint, this plays like deep EuropaCorp trash filtered through a lens of mean-spirited American animosity and excess. The result is relentlessly absurd, but also absurdly entertaining. It's utter nonsense, but fun nonsense that’s in on the joke (to an extent), and even funnier because everyone plays it straight faced.
High school was more or less the same for everyone, right?
You had football games, prom, cliques, and, of course, rabid, death-obsessed
teen serial killers stalking the halls. Okay, maybe I’m mixing up Tyler
MacIntyre’s Tragedy Girls with my own experience, I’ll have
to check on that. However it breaks down, this puts a whole new spin on the
mean girls phenomenon. It’s biting, wicked, and deceptively earnest.
