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snowshoe5603
Reviews
1883: Lightning Yellow Hair (2022)
Great Rollercoaster Ride...
...and I don't even like rollercoasters; at least not the ones in amusement parks. 1883 is a great ride though. It shows the beauty that is the American West, but it also shows the relentlessness of nature and the ugliness of its people.
It's also nice to see that the native Americans characterizations are much better here than in the Westerns of the 50's and 60's (I could never stand hearing the "Indians" speaking better English than the "whites," among other errors).
Keep it up. You've got a fan for life here.
Jack Reacher (2012)
Did anyone bother to read the book?
Lee Child's Jack Reacher is 6'5", 250 lbs. Tom Cruise is 5'7". I'm not really a purist by any stretch; I'm all for changing the story up a bit to keep the movie from being too predictable, but TC is not a convincing Reacher. Tom Cruise is best when he's playing Tom Cruise, which is definitely not needed here. As for the rest of the cast, they were all pretty good, most notably Alexia Fast as Sandy and Rosamund Pike, whom I have always liked, as the defense attorney Reacher ends up working for. Werner Herzog should have had more screen time. The bad guy Zec is one of the most frightening bad guys I've read in a long time. The writers should have read the book a bit closer, because there was much more material for them to use. Robert Duvall was his usual curmudgeonly self and Richard Jenkins was equally good as the play-it-safe prosecutor. All in all, this was an OK Tom Cruise movie, but a very bad Jack Reacher movie. The next time, cast someone who can see over the steering wheel without needing a pile of phone books.
Live Wire (1992)
Not too bad for a low-budget movie...
This was one of Pierce Brosnan's earlier outings as Danny O'Neal, an explosives expert with the FBI. When two U.S. Senators are assassinated by a bomber, Brosnan and his partner are stumped: Where are the pieces of the bomb? Where is the trigger?
I saw this the first time on one of the pay channels not long after it was released, mostly because Lisa Eilbacher (whom I've had a crush on since forever) was in the cast. I liked this movie because I was intrigued by the plot. How were they making bombs out of PEOPLE, for God's sake?
Good performances by Ben Cross and Brosnan as the bad guy and the hero, respectively. Ron Silver is also slimy as ever as a crooked senator, and Lisa Eilbacher rounds out the cast as Brosnan and Silver's love interest (did I mention that I'm nuts about her?).
So, if you're looking for a way to kill 90 minutes or so without having to work too hard at following the plot rent this. I found this again in the cheap section at the local rental store. It was well worth the $1.00 rental price.