‘The Smashing Machine’ (2025)
Brothers who direct together don’t always stay together. We know this from the Coens, who after 30-something films went off to do solo projects, and it seems to be the same for the Safdie brothers (“Good Time,” “Uncut Gems”), with Benny breaking out for this biopic about MMA fighting pioneer Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) when the sport was mostly in Europe and Japan. Much of the action takes place there, and it’s an odd sojourn. You can see Safdie, so good at channeling the freneticism of fringe personalities in “Gems” and “Good Time,” constrained here by facts versus fiction and straining to find a character motivation or that challenging event that drives the protagonist. Kerr’s challenges with painkiller addiction and recovery come early in the film, and there are domestic struggles at his Arizona hacienda with significant other Dawn (Emily Blunt), but otherwise no real arc. It’s more a meandering love letter to Kerr and an era, and in some ways has a docudrama feel. Johnson, jacked up to seam-bursting size, acts his pants off. It’s an impressive immersion and a major turn in his career, fusing his WWE roots and aspirations to be taken as more of a serious actor than straight-up action star or Schwarzenegger-ish comedian. Blunt, close in tenor to Amy Adams as the girlfriend in “The Fighter,” is good too but never gets enough breathing space to make Dawn fully formed, and the role comes dangerously close to lapsing into rote hysteria. The one seam Safdie finds is the camaraderie and bonding among the athletes, namely between Kerr and friend-coach-rival Mark Coleman (MMA fighter Ryan Bader, who nearly wrestles the film from Johnson and Blunt). It’s a soulful meander in search of a reason to go to the mat.
‘Ice Road: Vengance’ (2025)
Liam Neeson is a man of franchises. Take “Star Wars” or his surprise hit run with the “Taken” series, in which the lanky Irish gent leaned on his brusque brogue to play an ex-CIA operative drawn back into the game when people close to him get kidnapped. The “Taken” run tapped out at its third entry in 2014 (additional chapters have been rumored), but Neeson has since carried on playing tough, AARP-card-carrying men with a bit of an “Equalizer” or Jack Reacher angle, manifesting in fare such as “The Commuter” (2018), “The Marksman” (2020) and “The Ice Road” (2021), a mediocre take on Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 classic “The Wages of Fear” getting an unnecessary follow-up here. Roundabout circumstances have Neeson’s Canadian ice trucker, Mike McCann, navigating a bus through the mountainous roads of Nepal with perilous ravines around nearly every hairpin turn. McCann is in Nepal because his brother, who always wanted to ascend Mount Everest, died and wants his ashes spread there. To do so, McCann and his guide (Bingbing Fan) pile into a rickety bus with a potpourri of Westerners looking to kiss the sky at the base of the White Giant. There’s a land grab in action by local thugs looking to bring industry to the area by building a dam that would stop the flow of the valley’s life-giving river. Standing in their way is a lone, holdout family that won’t sell. Problems have solutions, and grandpa’s bus gets pushed off a cliff in a scene reminiscent of Steve Spielberg’s debut film “Duel” (1971). Naturally, on McCann’s bus is the surviving grandson, bringing a battalion of armed goons and the police in slow, mountain-ascending pursuit. McCann and his gritty guide are the only ones on the bone rattler skilled in savagery – two against the world. As a character actor with myriad credits, Bingbing gets to break out some here by playing with the nonviolence/kick-ass martial arts yin-and-yang of her Buddhist guide like Caine in “Kung Fu.” “Vengeance” is an easy, simple time suck. That said, Neeson’s next paycheck is more likely to come from a “Naked Gun” sequel than another “Ice Road.”
‘Play Dirty’ (2025)
About a half dozen or so movies have been made about Donald Westlake’s Parker character, a professional thief who pulls the trigger calmly and regularly with little remorse. Those who have played the bristling robber include Lee Marvin (indomitable), Mel Gibson, Jason Statham (who like Marvin, felt born for the part), Peter Coyote, Robert Duvall and even former bruising running back James Brown. Interesting choices, all imbued with cold calculation, an unwillingness to back down and manliness that would make Mark Wahlberg seem like a right choice – but no, not in this overly complicated and emotionally devoid actioner helmed by Shane Black (“The Nice Guys,” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”), in which Wahlberg’s just flat in his shoes, inert and vacant. The plot has to do with a South American relic, a poverty-stricken country under a dictator’s thumb, black ops and a crime syndicate known as The Outfit, which was the name of the 1973 Duvall movie; but it takes place mostly in New York City, where Wahlberg’s Parker and a crack team set out to heist the relic, on display at the U.N. The film’s best when cars blow up and trains derail; in between there’s depthless characters, stilted dialogue and little reason to care – except to maybe glean hidden agendas that feel tacked on, and in cases, illogical. Some of the supporting cast shine in bits, but it’s not enough: Tony Shalhoub (“Monk”) as the head of The Outfit; Nat Wolff, his goofball foot soldier; Rosa Salazar (“Alita: Battle Angel”), the quick-on-the-trigger femme fatale; and LaKeith Stanfield as Parker’s right hand, who runs a theater troupe on the side. Marvin, as the cold, calculating killer, had seething vengeance in his eyes when he pulled the trigger; Wahlberg’s Parker goes about his business with video game nonchalance. He doesn’t care, and neither do we.
For What it's Worth 
Leave a comment