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Showing posts with the label Joel Kinnaman

The Suicide Squad | Average Guy Movie Review

A new batch of convicts - as well as a few originals - are under the thumb of Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who's once again offering years off their prison sentences in return for completing a few jobs for Uncle Sam. This time she's sending them to the island nation of Corto Maltese. There they must infiltrate the capital and destroy a top secret research facility. Sounds easy enough. Task Force X is back, and with James Gunn at the helm things are madder than ever! The Guardians of the Galaxy  director has taken what David Ayer started and blown the roof off of it. But he has done so in a way that is respectful of what has gone before. Fans of the original (of which there are apparently few) will have no trouble going from  Suicide Squad  to The Suicide Squad . And yet, the new movie stands quite happily on it's own two feet. Rather than making them drastically different, the returning characters simply feel like they have grown a bit. Well, maybe not grown, but adapted, t

The Informer | Average Guy Movie Review

When a sting operation goes horribly wrong, FBI informant Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) is forced to return to the prison he's desperately trying to avoid in order to infiltrate the Polish mob. But while he gathers evidence on the inside, the FBI higher ups are getting cold feet on the outside, and with a detective from the NYPD sniffing around, things only get worse. When his and his family's safety is put in jeopardy, Pete must take matters into his own hands. Andrea Di Stefano's The Informer is a pretty average look at the world of informants and undercover investigations. It unfortunately suffers from a crammed plot, including all the clichés of a crime thriller and a prison movie as well. Joel Kinnaman does well as Pete Koslow, a man with everything to lose. Instead of the typical Hollywood tough guy, Koslow is a flawed man just trying to do the right thing. And whilst he is very capable, he's also under a lot of pressure and scared, something that comes acro

Altered Carbon ¦ Average Guy TV Review

In this dystopian future death is avoidable. At the point of death a person's consciousness is downloaded into their "stack" - a microchip built into the vertebrae at the base of the neck - which can then be inserted into a new body or "sleeve". 250 years after his death, Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) - a man who fought a rebellion against this very way of life - is awoken into Bay City (present day San Francisco) by Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy). Bancroft is one of the oldest and richest men on the planet and he wants Kovacs to investigate a murder, his own. Throughout the course of the investigation, Kovacs will come to blows with the police and the criminal underworld, some of whom may have more of an issue with the sleeve than the man who's occupying it! Altered Carbon is like Blade Runner meets The 6th Day - that Schwarzenegger movie about cloning. It's got the cyberpunk grittiness of Blade Runner, a noir, mystery thriller and the lone

Suicide Squad: Average Guy Movie Review

Once again the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) is caught up in controversy, this time with the release of Suicide Squad. So far critics have been very, well critical of the movie. Something fans aren't happy about, so much so that they have called for Rotten Tomatoes to be shut down. As a movie fan I find it a little extreme to want to quiet those who don't agree with you. One of the joys of movies is discussing and debating them, that doesn't really work if the other side can't speak. Are the fans worried about sequels? Because movie companies are more likely to look at profit, and maybe fan reaction. I'm not a movie critic, I'm just a movie fan and I thought Suicide Squad was brilliant. It was funny and action packed with a good story and great characters. More than anything it's a very different approach to a movie in a superhero universe. Amanda Waller Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assembles a group of the worst criminals and encarcerates them in Be