Chris Evans – The Magnificent 60s

Honey, Don’t! (2025) ** – Seen at the Cinema

Had I still been in the magazine business I would have welcomed this with open arms because it would have provided an ideal headline – “Honey, Don’t Go.”

I’m not sure what Ethan Coen (True Grit, 2010) thought he was making and even if it was a shaggy dog story as often were the tales he concocted with his brother this has turned out more like a dog’s breakfast. Which is a shame because it’s about time Margaret Qualley (The Substance, 2024) was elevated from indie product to mainstream. She’s certainly got a screen presence and if someone could only fit a movie around what she has to offer she’d be on her way.

Excepting some salty dialog, this comes up short on every front. The narrative is so thin it’s disappeared down every convenient rabbit hole, the characters are equally lacking (though my guess is they’re meant to be slices of cliché, that’s the game) and there’s a deliberate emphasis on keeping emotion to the bare minimum.

The two main characters, private eye Honey Donohue (Margaret Qualley) and cop M G Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), congratulate themselves on being so completely self-centered that all dalliances are strictly confined to one-nighters, such restrictions imposed before the other person gets all weepy and emotional. Honey and MG, both being lesbians, are able to get away with such notions. Imagine a male attempting to classify all females as just too emotional.

I say Honey is a private eye but it’s kind of hard for her to keep clients because they keep on being bumped off before she can take any action. And when she does, she doesn’t prove much cop. In fact, she’s actually that old film noir fallback – the dupe. And she only realizes she’s been played for a patsy when she sees – another old fallback – two cups on a table (it’s an old-fashioned house hence the teacups).

It’s a strange construct. The audience knows what’s going on but poor Honey is kept in the dark and at the climax it looks very much like she’s setting herself up to be the dupe again.

So what the audience knows that Honey doesn’t is that a woman who died in a car accident has had a distinctive ring stolen by a woman on a moped, Chere (Lera Abova), who in another old-time fallback can’t pass a pool without skinny dipping. The ring has a logo that ties in with that of the religious scam being run by uber hunk preacher Rev Drew Devlin (Chris Evans).who uses the church as a cover for some drug-running for Chere and to provide him a harem of submissive females.

A sub-plot that then becomes a main plot sees Honey putting in some time helping out her aunt’s wayward daughter Corinne (Talia Ryder) though you suspect she’s there just to let Honey beat the bejasus out of her niece’s abusive boyfriend.

There’s also an old creepy homeless fella hanging around that starts out as a red herring, looks as though it could dovetail into an emotional scene, but then shies well clear of that because, well heck, Honey doesn’t do emotion.

I’ve got a sneaky feeling that the director wasn’t trying to make a Coen Bros movie so much as a Tarantino one. There’s a helluva lot riding on the word “Macaroni” for example. And the application of lipstick. And there’s a helluva lot of nudges towards the hardcore – in the way of sex not music – a dishwashing scene and a bar sequence come to mind.

Sure, Honey snaps off a few one-liners but mostly you’re going to remember her sashaying along in a tight skirt and clackety high heels – which may well have the director’s intention for all I know.

This feels like a clumsier retread of Drive-Away Dolls (2024), a similar dive into lesbian-led crime, also starring Qualley, directed by Coen and co-written by Tricia Cooke, who performs the same service here.

More a collection of mismatched sequences with a myriad of oddball characters none distinctive enough to make you sit up than anything in the way of a coherent plot.

The Red One (2024) ***

Santa Claus meets Die Hard might have worked well enough if it hadn’t been padded out with all sorts of other festive characters from the dark side of Xmas and a sludge of sentiment about an absent father reconnecting with his son. Can’t quite decide if it’s family-friendly or aiming for a queasier relationship with a Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice audience. And I suspect if Amazon had the courage of its theatrical convictions, it would made this a Xmas cinema release rather than chucking it into picture houses now and lining it up for a small-screen Xmas special.

Attempts to merge James Bond-style big budget thriller with underworld shenanigans conjuring up the kind of misfits who’d have been slung out of a Star Wars cantina while at the same time as making up the rules as it goes along. There’s a mix-and-match feel to the characters – we get Gryla, a mythical Icelandic monster, Krampus, a hairy devil of Germanic extraction who has his fun the night before Xmas, but is repurposed here as a Santa’s big bad brother, as well as a bunch of gargoyles who are way too easily distracted by a hen who they, mysteriously, can’t manage to catch, and then like a throwback to Transformers we get tiny Lego style figures who turn gigantic when let loose. You can stop snowmen in their tracks by whipping off their carrot noses.

Face-slapping is reinvented, shapeshifting is the game, and as if nobody had watched how badly Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire failed we’re back to a villain with icy superpowers. The giant polar bear featured – cousin to the armored bear in The Golden Compass (2007) – in the poster is underused. Not to mention that Xmas staple, the kids threatened with losing out on presents if they are naughty. None of this should work at all, but it does fairly well.

On the eve of said Mr Claus’s big night, he gets kidnapped. Bodyguard Callum (Dwayne Johnson), who turns out to be more than 500 years old, is on the trail and tracks down hacker Jack (Chris Evans) who’s sold Santa’s secret location to villain Gryla (Kieman Shipka), the ex- of Krampus’s (Kristofer Hivju), who wants to trap every night child in the world inside the kind of glass snow globe that was a traditional Xmas present. She’s manufactured these in the gazillions.

Callum and Jack team up though the latter’s not much use, his contribution to the double act consisting mainly of double takes and it’s only when he doesn’t take the opportunity to escape Krampus’s lair that he becomes one of the team. Mostly, it’s one bizarre situation after another and although at just over two hours it’s already outstaying its welcome it could have done with spending some more time on outlining the background and developing the fiendish characters. It’s a world that seems surprisingly undercooked given the mega budget. On the plus side – or perhaps the minus depending on your perspective – there’s a cuteness bypass. There’s a little too much time spent on – unsuccessfully – showing how Santa manages to get himself down every single chimney in the world in the space of a night including time to gobble down some treats. Would have done better to stick to the Santa hijack than include a technologically-improved Xmas.

*Xmas spirit missing in this previous red one.*

This didn’t need the presence of Dwayne Johnson (Black Adam, 2022) and certainly Chris Evans (The Gray Man, 2022) is wasted but with the MCU world closing its doors on both actors, perhaps this is an attempt to set up a new series. As Mr Claus, J.K. Simmons (Juror #2, 2024) isn’t in it long enough. Jake Kasdan (Jumanji, The Next Level, 2019) directed from a script by Chris Morgan (Shazam! Fury of the Gods, 2023) and Hiram Garcia (Jumaji, The Next Level).

Not as bad as I expected.

Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Count me in. The buddy movie reinvented, the MCU legend trashed, all set in the ideal MCU location, The Void (worthy of two capital letters, I guess), the place where long-forgetten Marvel characters from the pre-Disney multiverse hang out, and it’s a fun ride. Whether of course this proves the death knell for the MCU after so much fan backlash and poor reviews remains to be seen. Next weekend’s box office will decide its fate one way or another.

But who the hell cares? If this is the extinction of the MCU, as some predict, then it is going out with a bang, a crazy superhero mash-up where you need to keep an MCU dictionary to hand so you can work who’s going to turn up next. Wesley Snipes, not seen in that Blade badass rig since 2004, and it’s not Capt America but Chris Evans’ earlier incarnation of Johnny Storm not seen since 2007, and there’s Channing Tatum as a character Gambit whose stand-alone picture never materialized, despite scoring highly in animated form.

Anything that MCU got wrong or was criticized for – the multiverse and the varying timelines – turn up here as plot. The “sacred time lime” is almost a character in itself and if you ever wanted to invent the most ideal/ironic MCU character, who else would that be but Mr Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen)?

The entire storyline is so off-the-wall that you’d think it’s never going to work but then when Deadpool’s around walls are toys, especially the fourth wall, that magical trick of speaking direct to the camera. And it’s Deadpool and his continual wisecrack commentary on proceedings that turns what could be a s**tshow into a hoot.

But some of the twists transform what could be another deathly routine of superheroes saving the universe (yawn, what again?) into something more human. Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) only wants to save his own tiny universe of half a dozen people, everyone who matters to him, and not a gazillion others. Somehow he teams up with the previously deceased Logan a.k.a. (in case you don’t have your MCU Dictionary handy) Wolverine to revive the moribund buddy movie, the best kickass bickering pair since Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon.

Or whatever. Anyway, they find themselves in The Void doing battle with that sweet Charles Xavier guy’s nasty twin sister Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin). And, yes, there’s still so much jiggering about with time that you’d think the Time Bandits or Doctor Who would be claiming copyright infringement. And sometimes you can almost hear the clack of the typewriter as the screenwriter tries to fix that last loose end.

But, as I said, whenever the going gets tough – especially when the going gets tough – you can depend on Deadpool’s motormouth to see the narrative through. Deadpool and Wolverine do make a great screen team, ideal opposites, growl vs grit, class vs. sass, and really you could just junk the narrative – or come up with an entirely different one – and still this picture would work because the two principles set the screen alight.

This is akin to when Guardians of the Galaxy ripped up the MCU playbook a decade ago and influenced every movie thereafter. The guess now is whether Deadpool and Wolverine will take MCU down a new stylistic avenue or whether this is a deliberate cul de sac. I’d guess not, since it’s going to be such a money-spinner, and I could see this pair worming their way into the new Avengers team to brighten up whatever doom-laden occasion is heading our way.

Maybe the MCU is giving the finger to the fanboys, hoping to attract a wider audience rather than pandering to an audience that seemed to have made up its mind about everything way in advance and wasn’t inclined to go along with any MCU experiment, feint or development. The audience I saw it with were clearly of mixed opinion, some feeling betrayed or at the very least insulted.

But I have a good bit less invested in the MCU. It takes me all my time to keep up with who’s who in this expanding universe. So treating this picture on its own merits, I thought it generated more than its fair share of laughs, and not always rude ones, although anyone with a woke inclination would be advised to steer clear.

Shawn Levy (Free Guy, 2021) directed.

Make up your own mind.

The Gray Man (2022) ** – Seen at the Cinema

I could have seen this for nothing on Netflix, but instead, hoping to do an action picture justice by seeing it on the big screen, I shelled out my bucks for the privilege. Bourne Ripoff is as much as you need to know. Lazy writing with a bundle of the incongruities you can get away with within the MCU because as long as there’s the requisite action nobody bothers too much about logic.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is John Wick gone wild. It’s many things gone wild, including a heap of overacting, and a pair of the biggest villainous klutzes you will ever come across. It’s vaguely redeemed by an explosions/ shootout/ tram chase in Vienna but that’s only enough to shift it up from one-star to two. And it’s a shame because Ryan Gosling (First Man, 2018) in his first movie for four years is a believable tough guy in the Bourne tradition and Ana de Armas delivers on the action chops she displayed in No Time to Die (2021).

*A poster straight out of the Joseph E. Levine playbook. He used to dream up these kind of posters which characters were assigned titles that bore no resemblance to the part they played on screen.*

It should be an action romp, but instead it’s a mess. A C.I.A. black ops unit – inventively called the gray department – is hiring convicted killers to knock off anyone they want. Six (Ryan Gosling) got jailed for an insane amount of time, would you believe (nope!) for, as a teenager, killing his dad who was domestically abusing both his sons (trying to drown Six, for example). Six’s latest mission is to kill a guy who turns out to be an assassin in the same line of work but who is blackmailing C.I.A. boss Carmichael (Rege-Jean Page).

There’s nothing cool about Carmichael, he throws coffee at windows when he’s cross, and that sets an awfully bad example because his underling Suzanne (Jessica Henwick) is also prone to getting very cross. But that’s nothing compared to complete nutjob Lloyd (Chris Evans) who enjoys a bit of torture and gives psychopaths a bad name, but if I got this right attended Harvard with Carmichael so that’s okay then. Lloyd is hired to kill Six because he knows too much. And Lloyd calls in other assassins.

Now we’ve had that template in Bourne so what’s going to make it different? I know, let’s ramp it up. Instead of individual assassins, who might display some kind of finesse, let’s have teams of rampaging assassins. You can’t really wreck Vienna with just an assassin or two, you need a whole army.

Danush (Avik San) is an unusual assassin in that he operates on his own, not needing a huge team, but he is also cursed by – remember he’s a ruthless assassin – being suddenly conscience-stricken.

Oh, I forgot to mention Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton), the guy who sprung Six from jail but is now retired. Luckily, he happens to have a young niece Claire (Julia Butters). And that comes in handy when Lloyd needs to bring him to heel – and can kidnap the girl. But wait, two years before, Six was assigned to protect Claire and saved her life twice.

Twice? Yep, once from assassination and once when he rushed her to hospital after something went wrong with her pacemaker. Yep, she has some terrible heart disease. But not enough apparently to prevent her being the world’s pacemaker poster girl. Guess what? She can race along the top of a castle and jump 100 feet off a castle wall into a moat.

After being blame-shamed by Carmichael, Six’s C.I.A. sidekick Dani (Ana de Armas) switches sides to help him and can be counted on to turn up to shoot darts at Lloyd and appear with a fast car in time to save Six from assassins on the aforesaid tram. But she’s one of the victims of the lazy writing. She has two clear chances to save the day by marksmanship and fails each time. The first excuse is just so dumb. Thrown a sharpshooting rifle by Six, she discovers this comes minus ammunition. “Never throw a loaded gun,” must be one of the stupidest lines ever written, a lame joke that clearly makes reference to No Time to Die. Armed with another sharpshooting device and with clear line of sight on Lloyd, for reasons that are never made clear she doesn’t shoot.

Did I mention that Six is the kind of tough guy who, armed with little more than a penknife, can saw through a water pipe because the directors want to do some kind of riff on Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) or that this this is the thriller version of If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Belgium (1969) with a different country about every ten minutes. And if people aren’t losing digits, it’s fingernails.

Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas come out of this well but Chris Evans (Avengers: Infinity War, 2018), with a Tom Selleck moustache, is just awful, a joke villain, the only surprise being he doesn’t twirl said moustache. It’s almost as if he’s doing his utmost to make people forget he was ever Captain Marvel, but this is to the utmost and beyond. Stick to Bridgerton would be my advice to Rege-Jean Page. Billy Bob Thornton (Bad Santa 2, 2016) plays one of his more restrained characters.

The Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War) throw every trick in the book at the movie without starting from the obvious point – a decent script.