Valentine’s Marathon: Mr. Right (2015)

And the Valentine’s Marathon finally starts! There’s only like a five day countdown to the actual day, not that it really means anything much to myself but its a nice excuse to jump into some romantic comedies and other romance dramas. I finally managed to find time to get some of it done.

The first one was actually quite unexpected but I wanted to be spontaneous so I ended up choosing Mr. Right. Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell, what can go wrong, right?

Let’s check it out!

Mr. Right (2015)

Director: Paco Cabezas

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Anna Kendrick, Tim Roth, James Ransone, Anson Mount, Michael Eklund, RZA, Katie Nehra

A girl falls for the “perfect” guy, who happens to have a very fatal flaw: he’s a hitman on the run from the crime cartels who employ him. – IMDB

It always feels good to start up a movie and right away, the comedy tone is exactly what you’d like. Mr. Right was exactly what I liked about it. It helps that I’m a fan of Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick. Mr. Right isn’t perfect for sure. The story itself has some pretty awkward and great moments. Some other fun times and there’s a tad of action here and there but the true stars of the movie in this rather messy plot line that seems to really work best when Sam Rockwell and/or Anna Kendrick is on screen. Lucky for us (and the movie as a whole), they are in a lot of scenes. Our villain is a little undefined because there’s Tim Roth’s character hunting down Sam Rockwell, that trickles into a somewhat silly but manipulative plot of these brothers and their feud, who are the obvious baddies. Mr. Right works in all the odd and awkward ways.

Mr. Right has a great cast headlining for it. Anna Kendrick plays as Martha, a girl freshly broken up and in the recovering days, she meets Mr. Right (aka Francis), played by Sam Rockwell. Anna Kendrick as Martha sometimes reminds me a little of Tina Fey. That is a great thing because Tina Fey’s humor usually works for me. Anna Kendrick however carries herself nicely as the sweet but unique girl. Martha is a colorful character. She has weird thought processes and connects odd things together and right from the child of her aspiring to be a T-Rex, we already know we’re in for some fun times. There are not enough words to describe how fantastic Anna Kendrick plays this role into a believable manner. Its hard for us to find someone so awkward also but she does in Mr. Right, a hitman with a reverse psychology to not only dance his way out of situations, view a connection to the objects around him to predict when and where things will drop but also kill the people who hire him because murder is wrong. Mr. Right is on the run but when he misses Martha, he feels the connection right away and it changes who he is a lot because he doesn’t want to lose her. In just a short few days, the connection between Martha and Francis are amazing. Odd and awkward but incredibly cute and fun. Props goes to Sam Rockwell for being able to pull off such a crazy character but also to both of them for delivering incredible chemistry. Even without the action and fighting and guns, watching them both was charming and adorable and entertaining to no end.

I’m a fan of Tim Roth. I’ve liked him since his role in Lie to Me. He was the highlight of 2015’s The Hateful Eight (even if I didn’t like the movie). Yet here, his character is interesting to say the least. Its hard to say its bad but probably more underused. Tim Roth plays Hopper, the mentor of Francis who is now hunting him down to set him straight from what he thinks is pathetic ways. However, Hopper also is a master of disguises and when he acts as a cop in New Orleans, his accent actually sounds pretty bad. Not that I’m an expert at accents but it felt a little fake, which it is, of course. In many ways, if this plot was only about Hopper chasing down Francis and then Francis falling for Martha, perhaps it would be more neat.

However, we then step into the other plot point of the actual baddies which are brothers in feud where the younger Von, played by James Ransone, is trying to use Francis’s reverse hitman oddity to his advantage and get rid of his brother, Richie, played by Anson Mount who now runs the show. Von has the help of Johnny Moon, played by Michael Eklund (who I recently complimented for his role as the bad guy in The Call). These guys are all idiots on purpose, meaning the script wrote them like that and its these moments that give the movie a comedic action moments and in all honestly, with a story that doesn’t really have much going for it with these bad guys and whatever they are up to, that is what makes it all the more entertaining. It actually boosts the characters of Francis and especially Martha as she breaks out of her shell and embraces her crazy making her really the perfect match for her Mr. Right.

You know what? The more I write about it and think about Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick as Mr. Right/Francis and Martha, I just can’t help but love them more and more. Sure, Mr. Right has a few flaws, mostly in a somewhat messy plot with supporting characters not used to their full potential but there’s something special here. Its entertaining and has some really great comedic moments. The chemistry between Francis and Martha is awesome and made me love them and cheer for them in all the weirdest ways to actually believing that they are in fact, perfect for each other. And Francis compliments Martha in the oddest moments during the movie and its kinda cute and sweet and hilarious all at the same time. Action-romantic comedy dose totally fulfilled here.

Have you seen Mr. Right? Are you a fan of Anna Kendrick and/or Sam Rockwell?

The Call (2013)

Welcome 2017 of movie reviews! We are back!

This Saturday marks the first day of starting to work on those unwatched movies in our quite extensive movie collection. It kind of haunts us as we sit there and play video games or turn on Netflix and choose something there and especially when we switch on Pitch Perfect or Easy A for the nth time. While I would love to go in my favorite sequence, alphabetical order, there are movies that I’ve wanted to watch and push away. Plus, last year Netflix A-Z (which I still have to wrap up very quickly but am taking a little break), took a lot of funky turns into movies I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch. This year, I’m taking a “follow my heart” path and the first movie as I scanned starting from the “A” and landed on the first movie in “C” for The Call. I like Halle Berry enough and I love Abigail Breslin and its been one that I’ve wanted to watch for quite some time.

Let’s check it out!

The Call (2013)

Director: Brad Anderson

Cast: Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin, Morris Chestnut, Michael Eklund, Roma Maffia

When a veteran 911 operator takes a life-altering call from a teenage girl who has just been abducted, she realizes that she must confront a killer from her past in order to save the girl’s life.-IMDB

Thrillers have a hard time of striking a good balance of building intrigue, making us care for the characters and feeling immersed. Many movies beg us to question ourselves whether the end justifies its means. Sometimes the journey os so great that we can ignore a lackluster ending. The Call is not one of these situations. It starts and climaxes to incredibly tense and immersive moments. However, the third act turns into such typical Hollywood territory with a finale that makes it feel even worse.

One of the best parts of The Call is its intelligent characters. Most specifically, Halle Berry’s character called Jordan, who is a 911 operator who goes through a situation that breaks her and turns into an operator trainer instead until by coincidence, she walks past a call that the current less experienced operator can’t handle and she takes over. Jordan is a good character with her struggles and pains. We never dive very deep into her inner scars and if this movie was longer, perhaps they would have but that make make it too dramatic for its own good. Jordan is smart and collected and she guides a call of a teenage girl using a disposable phone kidnapped in the car trunk. She may have a ton of tricks up her sleeve but her true quality is constantly reassuring and encouraging the girl to not give up even after a few traumatic events. Jordan is a fighter and in many ways, this call might be the closure she needs to get back onto the floor of The Hive (aka the 911 operator center). If her character makes us believe in the stress and hectic environment 911 operators go through. In dire situations, this job is not a joke because the flexibility and fast thinking and adaptation skills could be what saves or kills someone. That is the beauty of Jordan’s character but that is until she makes an unexpected but also rather unrealistic choice to me with gets us into the third act. From there, the character somewhat crumbles as well.

While Jordan is the character that standout, her role can’t be accentuated without where the actual kidnapping is going on. Abigail Breslin plays the kidnapped teenage girl. She struggles to find her strength but eventually does and lasts much longer than we would expect. We don’t know much about her but we do want her to survive as much as Jordan does. However, her angle doesn’t only show her conversation with Jordan and what she does to try to escape or be rescued but we also get a glimpse of our kidnapper. More than a glimpse perhaps because things do get quite out of hand. In fact, our seeing kidnapper is the sneak peek that our characters don’t know. The right amount of suspense is built to make sure that we also will be at the edge of our seats wondering what is the deal with our kidnapper and who he actually is. In fact, Michael Eklund takes on the role of the mysterious kidnapper quite well. He is odd and peculiar in his ways. There’s something rather off-putting about his character, which unfortunately, doesn’t amount to much but at least we get a good idea of why he is doing what he is doing.

Overall, The Call does a lot right. The setting in The Hive or the trunk or en route. The character’s are engaging and intriguing even if they don’t really get the emphasis or care that perhaps a longer story may have benefited from, but then it might not be all that necessary. The plot and pace is intriguing and tense for the most part. What it suffers from and dooms it is the final act which heads into the typical Hollywood arc which dives out of reality and becomes a little nonsensical with our main character seeming to make bad judgement calls over and over again. It is a shame because if they had pulled together a better ending, The Call had the potential to be so much more. Except all we have left is this disappointing finale that somewhat makes us forget how great the first two acts were that led to it.

Have you seen The Call? What are your thoughts?