The timing would seem right, coming on the heels of the conclusion of zeitgeist-tapping television hit Breaking Bad, for a movie in which a self-sacrificing hero walks tall into a small town and takes steps to take down the meth trade. Alas, the punishingly witless action flick Homefront is more a movie from the 1980s than for these times. Starring in a script from Expendables mate Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham delivers all the expected scowls and growls, but there’s no originality, nuance or even dumb-fun catharsis to recommend this inept exercise in punch-’em-up justice. Full of empty, puffed-up talk of “backwoods reckoning,” the movie plays like a dumb-jock, steroidal riff on Walking Tall, or a cousin of the 1989 cult classic Road House, minus any of the latter’s fun or sense of self-awareness. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Open Road Films, R, 100 minutes)
Daily Archives: November 26, 2013
John Sayles Talks Go For Sisters, More
There are independent filmmakers and then there’s writer-director John Sayles, whose Twitter avatar and biography (“Original Independent”) could scarcely say it better. For more than three decades, he’s used his often lucrative work as a for-hire script doctor to help fund autonomous screen visions that explore a wide range of themes, from race, class and crime to political corruption and labor union turmoil. Go For Sisters is his latest film, his 18th behind the camera, and it stars Lisa Gay Hamilton as a no-nonsense Los Angeles parole officer who leans on the connections of a wayward high school friend (Yolanda Ross) when her adult son goes missing, tripping headlong into a twisted web of human trafficking and other criminal enterprises. I recently had a chance to speak to the warm and candid Sayles one-on-one and in person, about his movie, his career and why he’s not as likely to write things as ambitious as he once did. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.