An American action thriller directed by Richard Donner, starring Bruce Willis, Mos Def and David Morse.
A detective has to escort a witness to trial, but stops and leaves the car on the way. A man with a gun approaches the witness in the car, but the detective shoots this man before he can kill the witness. The detective and witness hide in a bar and call for backup, but the crooked cops who arrive want to kill the witness. The detective disagrees and the chase starts.
How appropriate to watch after 13th (2016). Here is a film about that exact type of police brutality, black targeting and prison industrial complex, but a white cop breaks routine to expose corruption. The plot held my attention and the characters fit together well in it. I liked the team of Bruce Willis and Mos Def. I liked Mos Def's riddle:
"You're driving in a hurricane and you see three people at a bus stop.
One is an old lady and she's sick. One is your best friend and he saved
your life. And the third is the lady of your dreams. Now check it out,
you only have room for one in your car, which one do you take?"
and Bruce Willis' answer:
"You give your car keys to your best friend, who takes your car and
drives the old lady to a hospital. You stay behind with the love of your
life."
Production was typical of modern action films. There was lots of moving camera and lots of fast editing. Audio was slightly better, with less whispering and mumbling than I expected from the year. I rate this o.k. because I could take it or leave it. You may want to consider watching it.
A Danish German Netherlands Italian American British French Swedish Finnish Icelandic Argentinian Norwegian Taiwanese Belgian Musical drama directed by Lars von Trier, starring Bjork, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse and Peter Stormare.
A Czech woman has moved to America so that her son can have an operation on his eyes. She is going blind and her son soon will if his eyes are not fixed. A neighbor finds her savings for the operation and steals it. She tries to take it back, but he is accidentally shot in the struggle. She kills him and takes the money as he begs her to do so and the case goes to court.
The whole Golden Heart Trilogy is not equal. This seemed restrained, repressed, whitewashed and censored compared to the other 2 films, lots like Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Rainbow Thief (1990). Most of this was in Dogma 95 style, but the musical numbers had non-diegetic music and tripods for the camera. Bjork is extremely attractive, but her vocal delivery and phrasing seem repetitive, like she wrote 1 song in 1993 and has been repeating it ever since with different lyrics. I like to think that the ending was caused by this, but I won't spoil that too much. Bjork says that Lars shared my view of her appearance and attempted to act on it in a #metoo manner. I didn't like the plot of this as much as the other Golden Heart films and the characters were not as good either. I'm rating it o.k. and in this case, that counts as an insult. You may want to skip this if you're watching Lars von Trier films. His other stuff has all been so much better.
