Whoa, whoa, whoa. So how do you get past an action movie called 'Bake'? Carriers, mechanics... Cowardly boys are looking at the baker. In fact, you can easily walk past the Baker, but there in the title role super colorful Ron Perlman. And... Yeah, well, I was in the mood to watch a simple action movie from the new ones. Or maybe I wanted some baking, I know.
Anyway, the movie is obviously weak. But. He's kind of -- well, no pretensions, above his head and not jumping. And to such films, in my opinion, it is quite applicable what Chesterton said about books:
A good book will tell us about one soul, a bad one about many.
Such films – massive, but not so much, made tyap-gap, but with good actors – really say something collective, something simple, unambiguous and understandable, as if Nautilusovsky’s “Tutankhamun” is re-sang. You go into the movie, you get exactly what you expected, and you come out. That's all.
“Baker” for the thousandth time uses a win-win scheme “child and protector” (remember “Last of As”); where it is necessary skillfully presses on emotions; a severe sociopath, as usual, communicating with a pure soul, recovers; villains get what they deserve. Perlman plays (or does not play) well, the rest - almost all - something goes wrong, then overplay, then hang, a lot of questions about motivation, the film mercilessly suffers from the terrible computer graphics ... And then there's Harvey Keitel from "Reservoir Dogs."
In general, I have a strange situation with Baker (hell, how funny it is): I can not advise him to anyone, but I do not regret the time spent. Such pies.
Curiously, with each generation, children get worse and parents get better, so it follows that more and more bad children grow up to be better parents. Weslaw Brudzinski
Watch or Not Watch The Baker (2022)
Ron Perlman is a Canadian-American fighter. Ratings keep level, reviews and reviews are mostly positive. Let's see why.
1. The plot develops rapidly, especially not going into the details of the lives of the main characters, but this is enough to understand. The story is typical: the father (Ron Perlman) gave all himself to work (apparently he or a retired agent of the CIA, the FBI or some other structures), while missing the upbringing of his son. The son, played by Joel Moore, after the death of his mother (as I understood from the flashbacks, she died) went down the slope, leading a criminal or near-criminal lifestyle, not communicating with his father. At the same time, the son has a daughter (Emma Ho) and a wife who, unfortunately for the child, also died. After a series of events, the son reluctantly dumps all his headache on the parent, while dying at the hands of bandits, and the daughter also leaves him. A typical failed child. And a father, who works as a baker, comes into play to protect his daughter and search for the killers of his son. Unfortunately for the bandits (Elias Coteas and Harvey Keitel), Dad is not just a baker, but a retired thug who once served for the benefit of the native state. And I will tell you, despite the uncomplicated plot, everything looks in one breath and is very even fascinating, sometimes dramatic (especially the line with the unhappy mute granddaughter).
2. The actors, as for me in this film, performed their roles magnificently.
Ron Perlman acts as a retired servant, while he is not immortal, like Denzel Washington or Liam Nisson in his roles, and very much even gets injured, due to his age and lack of physical ability to fight back younger and more motivated bandits. He certainly wins from experience, but it is hard. In general, not a typical immortal retired military, agent, policeman, civil servant, postman, machinist. Do you understand?
Elias Koteas plays the role of a mercenary bandit tired of his work and burdened with flashbacks of atrocities past and present, as well as thoughts about “what fate God has prepared for him there.” Watching the actor’s play is interesting, and the character fits perfectly into what is happening.
Emma Ho - a small actress played a great role of a mute and wounded by her difficult fate little girl, the granddaughter of that baker.
Harvey Keitel plays the role of a typical supermafia, who is very much in charge of everyone, but at the same time, oddly enough, fair.
3. In this paragraph, I want to highlight the fighting scenes and the setting of the interactions of the characters as a whole on the screen. Yes, perhaps this is not a masterpiece of world cinema, but what happens on the screen makes you empathize with the characters and watch until the end. For director Jonathan Sobol, who has up to 10 films, a very, very decent result.
The result is that the film is definitely worthy of your attention and is able to appeal to fans of the genre and casual passers-by.
7 out of 10
It would be just a normal good, but not exciting criminal action movie. If it were not for the unusually high level of realism, which forces us to evaluate it as good. Directing and acting at the level. The story itself is a bit boring, but I was surprised how the director managed to hold my attention with realism without using the superpowers of a positive hero typical of action films.
Did you miss the movies of the 2010s, where Jason Statham sends out thugs to eternal rest and protects a child? No less colorful and cool actor Ron Perlman, who for some reason I remember in the image of the medieval war in mail, resolves issues with the local crime trafficking drugs. By day, an unremarkable baker, like making his pastries by the clock in the Pappi bakery, and by night - a veteran with PTSD who is overcome by nightmares of the past and insomnia. I would not call him an old man, although in the film he is called that.
The fighting scenes are well staged, but there are not many. The girl doesn't look like him, but she's still a granddaughter. The child plays well. “Baker” is a high-quality criminal action movie with a beaten simple plot, in the best traditions of films with Statham. It looks easy, there are no drawn-out moments, but there is a minus: the plot is very simple, and the film looks fast. I like something more intriguing with interesting plot twists and an unexpected ending. There is no such thing here.
For obvious reasons, American cinema is not enough. So, last year's action movie "The Baker." Of course, the role in my choice was played by the lead actor, the legendary Hellboy and even more legendary Clarence “Clay” Morrow from “Sons of Anarchy”, Ron ours, you know, Perlman.
Short story: lives in a small Florida town closed and gloomy baker Pappi, contains a small bakery named after himself. Bakes buns and chicken sandwiches, delivers them to customers, no, not on a bike with a square bag over his shoulders, but on his van. At night, for some reason, he is tormented by nightmares (why we will find out near the end of the film).
But Pappi’s calm is disturbed by the arrival from Palm Beach of his son Pete (Joel Moore), with whom, according to the canons of American cinema, he has not communicated in years. Moreover, during this time, Pappie was the granddaughter of Delfi (Emma Ho), a complex girl who has not spoken since she got into a car accident with her mother, in which her mother did not survive. The son leaves his granddaughter at his grandfather's and leaves for Palm Beach. Here, in fact, begins the dramatic line of relations between granddaughter and grandfather.
Overhearing the phone conversation of his son, Pappi realizes that his son is in trouble with the drug mafia. Here's a little bit of history. Florida, in addition to a place for retired pensioners, the cheerleaders of Russian show business, and a developed sex industry (which, incidentally, is run by our compatriots), has become a mecca of drug trafficking. It is understandable, the abundance of Cuban immigrants, easy logistics, the proximity of Cubans to Colombians and Mexicans and the almost complete lack of control. What else? My American friend Tim said that in the 80s there was already a complete lawlessness, you could shoot coke at passers-by, as we in those years shot cigarettes. Or remember the fate of the iconic hero Tony Montana - a Cuban immigrant who became the head of the shadow business - where? That's right, Miami, Florida. So Pappie and Delfi get in the van and go to Palm Beach.
Immediately they get into various kinds of bindings, in which it suddenly turns out that, as Filatov said in his fairy tale, “our Fedot, as it turned out, do not deceive us so much.” The battle scenes are filmed skillfully and brutally, even cruelly. And here the grandfather and granddaughter are faced with all sorts of ghouls, among which, of course, there is a sinister kind of Slav named Sirko (Ronnie James Hughes).
You say it's corny. Well, first of all, let’s take into account the laws of the genre, the plots in action films are usually the same type. And secondly, what do you expect from an action movie - deep intelligence? Don't make my slippers laugh. That's not what they're shooting for.
And actors. Ron Perlman is absolutely in his place and in his role - first a frowning unsociable, then a powerful brutal. Joel Moore did not differ much, and he was not required. The girl Emma Ho, although she looks a little older than her heroine, certainly does not let her grandfather down. Well, the cherry on the cake, Harvey Keitel himself, playing, as the Italian mafioso say, il cappo di tutti cappi - the most important boss.
So if you like classic school action movies and are ready to spend an evening watching, welcome to Palm Beach.
There was a baker... He lived quietly and monotonously: pëk bread, delivered it in his van, and in his sleep suffered from nightmares. And so it was until the moment when his son suddenly came to him, whose birthday he could already remember only approximately. And the son didn't come alone. It turned out that our baker has long been a full-fledged grandfather, about which he was neither a dream nor a spirit. But this is not that at first he was happy, because the visiting son almost threw his new granddaughter on him and went to an important meeting, which in his plans was to change their lives with his daughter forever. But as they say, “Man assumes.” And then it becomes clear that our silent, gray-haired big guy did not baking bakery products all his life.
To view the picture with the uncomplicated name “Baker” I was pushed by the performer of the main role of the old Ron Perlman. The textured uncle, with a non-standard appearance, often creating the same textured characters on the screen, often of course of the second plan, but in the title of the credits he also managed to be present more than once. For a long time remembered the thugs in his performance in Alien-4 and Blade-2. Especially Reinhard of the latter, who with his charisma completely overlapped Blade himself, and by the audience's attention could compete perhaps only with Nomak, performed by Luke Goss. Well, when I first watched Hellboy, not knowing who was in the credits, I unmistakably saw behind the red suit, old Ron, who, in my opinion, perfectly fell into the image of Red.
Naturally, Perlman’s acting peak has been around for a long time, and the quality of the last pictures with his participation ranges from average to frankly second-rate. The last time I happened to see him in the crime film “Esher”, where he played an elderly killer.
This film was more enjoyable than vice versa. On the one hand, a typical criminal action movie, with a plot of which there were already hundreds. The guy who was in the wrong place and could not resist the temptation to profit, sudden family ties, killers tormented by the pangs of conscience, brutal thugs, corrupt cops, charismatic mafia, and of course the main character with a dark past. But everything looks nice, everything according to the patterns of the past video era. In the frame, even the minimum number of modern gadgets, phones are mostly button-button, and even ordinary disk. Everything was shot well, without pathos, with a sufficient amount of realism, without separation from the harsh reality. The criminal atmosphere is emphasized by the cold slowness of the narrative.
Here even action, albeit dosed, but very tough and uncompromising. Not John Wick, of course, but the showdowns are quite high-quality, even the main tool of any baker will go in the course - the roller. But due to the fact that our brave baker is already over 70, sometimes quite clearly catches the eye, as in combat and dynamic scenes, Ron's grandfather is replaced by a wide-shouldered double, especially strongly this rushed in a protracted fight in his bakery, where a few minutes we show the hero of the mutating enemy, then casually, then briefly, then only to the neck. But this is already nitpicking, Perlman due to age can be given a discount. And all the other fights will not get bored. Starting from the very first in the parking lot, ending with a fight in the toilet, where without it.
Perlman confidently plays a man who should not have been contacted, who by the sound of a shot alone can determine the caliber and brand of the gun. Drama adds the line with the granddaughter, who survived his own tragedy, and for good reason is so fanatical about the seat belt in the car, the hero later learns why. The other actors don’t fall into the mud either. Although they do not have much screen time, they are all remembered. This is a relatively young Joel Moore, playing a son, and Elias Koteas in the role of a hesitant killer, and of course Harvey Keitel in the usual role of authority, who, despite the age of 80, looks cheerful. Well, the final verbose dialogue of the old guard puts a logical point:
It cost me a lot of money with your son.
- It's more expensive to me.
Summing up, unexpectedly strong in all aspects, albeit a typical criminal thriller, with elements of action and drama, with the strong play of old Ron, who is just nice to see in the frame in good health.