Leaving Las Vegas Nick nicknamed "Trump" - handyman fist profile: he will become your bodyguard for the right time, find bad guys, or just play the role of a bully in a cafe, insulting your girlfriend, so that you theatrically and with all your heart show off and give such a change that the above-mentioned girlfriend idolizes her savior for the rest of her life. That’s actually where the movie begins. But the sketch in the bar from the prologue is not revealed by the intense further action, as you would expect from a picture of Simon West, and frantically continues to jump on similar sketches, every minute losing the plot and narrative lines.
For the first forty minutes, nothing happens. Statham is not allowed to punch anyone, but is forced to stagger around bars, burn matches, drink vodka, and talk about something. Acting charisma during this time is manifested only in the scene of self-presentation for a new client - a rich boy in need of a bodyguard and a tour of the local casinos in Las Vegas. Blaming West for a boring narrative is an ungrateful affair, it seems that it is still a mediocre scenario, because it hardly comes to a fight in the hotel room, where Nick-Trump with one credit card cuts a bunch of major criminals, the director reveals his potential to the maximum.
The problem with the film is that there are only two such scenes in the film. The above-named fight with a credit card and the final bloody mix involving cutlery: a small knife and ... spoons! Yes, for scenes of murder and mutilation with a spoon from a cheap diner, the film should have given an Oscar if there were such nominations. West shoots the spectacle and muzzle perfectly when it finally comes to them, but at the same time the film sags so much in all these plot conversations, stretched out the rest of the hour and a half between the action that you willy-nilly admit - "Trump" (aka "Stray Card") - still the weakest film with Statham in recent years, except for very bad "Hummingbird".
Yes, paintings like “Blitz”, “Defender”, “The Last Frontier” are clearly not projects of the level of the cult “Carrier”, but still were products clinging, memorable as possible and moderately bright. The "map" is devoid of zest and interest in what is happening. The villain is bland and boring, the girl is dull and nondescript, Statham is chatty and low-fought, and the main partner is completely lost even not among the others. Nick-Trump dreams of a comfortable life and his own yacht in the ocean, where he is going to go, leaving Las Vegas, and winning a lot of money in the local casinos, hardly personally believing in such thoughts of freedom. Not the best and not the most interesting character in the career of a professional swimmer, but even this could be presented to the viewer somehow more interesting. From the director’s point, there is a very weak presentation of characters with futile attempts to somehow reveal their characters.
The picture is a patchwork blanket, cut with white threads: here is a sketch-prologue, here is a sketch about a prostitute and a sadistic Italian, here is a Glavger wins half a million, but instead of making money, he loses everything to the last cent, and so on. Continuous sketches, continuous new and new sketches of plots, sort of related, but looking ridiculous almanac of boring memoirs, where, again, I want to highlight for viewing only two cool scenes of fights.
And it seems that everything is in place: R rating, blood, original fighting on spoons and credit cards, two pairs of female boobs in the episode "for the tick", and thank you, famous director and star of cool action movies. So what's wrong? It does not work out of this solyak this time to muddy something clear and whole. And not because Statham has “the same films” in the opinion of a number of stupid filmmakers, not because West cannot twist the intrigue and keep the tension in the frame. It's about the story. This time, Jason Carrier-Mechanic-Defender chose a boring project. The film is based on a book that has already been filmed, and it is not clear that the blame for the blandness of what is happening on the source or screenwriter is not clear. After all, the screenwriter here with the sonorous name Goldman, firstly, twice the winner of the “Oscar”, and secondly, wrote the plots of such films as “Ghost and Darkness”, “Daughter General”, “Chaplin”, and with book adaptations on his wave – several times adapted the works of Stephen King.
Perhaps the filmmakers just didn’t try their best. Perhaps the whole book was so hard to fit into the film that it began to look like a patchwork. Maybe it was not possible to adapt this story interestingly, or vice versa, it was worth changing something for the sake of cinematography and drive. But, alas, none of this happened, and there was not even an action movie, and not a thriller, (to call it all a “criminal drama” somehow is ridiculous), and some not entirely understandable movie for once, where you can highlight a number of advantages, but to advise anyone except Statham fans, as such, such a film is not worth it. Fans also do not expect delights and mega-spectacles, but the "Map" is at least better than "Hummingbird". Not a bad movie with Statham.
6 IZ 10
Original