Blu-ray Review: 10 Minutes Gone (2019)

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10 Minutes Gone is a risky title because if you multiply that by nine, you'll have what you'll feel at the end of this movie when you realize that it took eight-nine minutes (of your life) to lead you to a conclusion so predictable that it's telegraphed within the first five.

In a nutshell, Gone is one of those VOD heist flicks where a group of crooks said to be the best call each other by their real names during a big score that inevitably goes wrong. Only this time, Michael Chiklis is knocked out after a botched job and wakes up ten minutes later with the loot gone, his brother (and partner in crime) dead, and no idea who made it happen.

Not mano a mano but robber a robber, with Bruce Willis breathing down his neck because somebody pocketed the jewels that he hired them to steal from a bank vault, Chiklis tracks down everyone involved one by one to see if he can figure out just what exactly transpired during those ten crucial minutes.

Bringing along his brother's girlfriend who — hindered by a bad script and an unconvincing portrayal by Backtrace's Meadow Williams — reacts to the news that her lover died by flatly saying “That can't be right. Shit,” Chiklis travels from one shootout to the next.

An awkward film which suffers from third rate crime movie dialogue delivered by actors who look as though they had just been told their lines before cinematographer Peter Holland's cameras started rolling, what the script by first time feature screenwriters Kelvin Mao and Jeff Jingle lacks in logic, 10 Minutes Gone makes up for in guns and squibs.

By now a veteran of the video on demand filmmaking trade, perhaps knowing that on paper, this thing is not the sharpest tool in a safecracker's shed, director Brian A. Miller does his damndest to ensure that his action sequences are there to distract.

Spending a majority of the film's budget on visual effects to make each gunfight pop as though every battle was the standoff at the O.K. Corral — only set in nondescript warehouses with indistinguishable production design — 10 Minutes Gone serves up some of the most impressive shootouts of Miller's filmography so far.

While Willis' suave presence looks good on a poster and he turns in a serviceable, if slight performance, besides the action, the real thing elevating Gone from being a flat out awful movie is Michael Chiklis who carries everything on his ample shoulders.

Registering more emotion throughout the film than the entire ensemble cast combined, Chiklis reminds us just how effective he is on the screen in — as he acknowledges in a behind-the-scenes Blu-ray featurette — the same type of role he's played throughout his career while carving out a niche in the cops and robbers genre. And even though he deserves something worthier of his talent, he's routinely strong here, regardless of whom he shares a scene with or the wooden dialogue being exchanged before the bullets start flying.

Yet action and Chiklis aside, unless you're a superfan of the actor or it shows up on cable TV when you're in bed with the flu, in the end, there's just not enough to salvage Ten Minutes of being worth ninety of your time.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Reprisal (2018)

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As larger-than-life as the characters he plays, much like Nicolas Cage, Bruce Willis has starred in approximately 265 direct-to-disc movies over the past 5 years. And sure enough, as the action hero's latest Blu-ray begins, we're treated to a series of his recent trailers which together play like a short prequel, setting up director Brian A. Miller's aptly named Reprisal.

Of course the upside of Willis being in so many movies is that we never have too long to wait for a new release as there's one available almost as often as a new episode of Moonlighting aired back in the 1980s.

But at the same time, for a man who first blew us away walking across broken glass in every movie lover's favorite holiday action movie, Die Hard, with so many films on Willis's schedule in a calendar year, his characters continue to get smaller and more illogical as filmmakers try anything to squeeze him in before he's due on another set.

Case in point is Willis's poorly developed character James in the slight yet modestly entertaining B-movie Reprisal.

A walking contradiction, instead of helping his civilian next door neighbor Jacob (Frank Grillo) track down the highly-skilled criminal that robbed his bank, killed one of Jacob's employees, and may have cost him a job, ex-cop James merely spends a few days brainstorming up a nonsensical Homeland style case-board with Jacob.

At last thinking they have a good lead (though it isn't fully clear how), rather than take it to the authorities or offer the former police officer's son some actual backup, James simply hands Jacob an old police radio for emergency use and sends him out on stakeout duty, which is predictably when – as the law of action movies dictates – all hell breaks loose.

Going against James's advice, after stumbling into the secret lair of super villain Gabriel (played by Johnathon Schaech), Jacob soon finds himself in the middle of yet another deadly Cincinnati robbery.

While thankfully Bruce Willis gets to leave his location at the house next door for the film's big action sequence near the end of the movie, having a badass ex-cop stuck confined to a roughly 30 foot radius with zero explanation – when even one or two lines of dialogue could suffice – is disappointing to say the least.

Raising even more suspension-of-disbelief problems for Reprisal's overall storyline, without James there to guide him, Jacob does something so insanely out of character that he risks the lives of, not only himself and Willis's largely housebound ex-cop, but also the two people he loves most in the world in the form of his wife (Olivia Culpo) and diabetic daughter.

A clunky segue from Points A to B designed to raise the stakes and lead us into Reprisal’s more suspenseful third act, first time screenwriter Bryce Hammons could've easily figured out a more organic way to reach the same plot-point of a standoff that's at least in line with the character he's created in Jacob. And regrettably it's one of a handful of red flags that pull us out of what had thus far been a pretty solid direct-to-disc action movie, thanks largely due to the strength of its cast.

For although Gabriel's rush into another robbery following his daring heist in the movie's impressive first big action sequence makes us wonder if at least one key scene was left on the cutting room floor (as the sequences of him planning for his next job make it appear to be something grander in scale), Schaech puts some real menace into his scenes.

A far cry from his breakout performance in That Thing You Do!, just as he has been in a number of recent projects on screens big and small, once again, Schaech is impressive in an against type role where, he and Frank Grillo (in particular) do their best to flesh out their admittedly thinly drawn characters. And fortunately their efforts helps us stay with them – for awhile at least – as the film takes the first of several turns that don't make much sense.

Able to quicken pulses during both the bank heist as well as the film's intense yet predictable conclusion, it's apparent that much like the actors, Reprisal's director (who's helmed a few other movies for Willis) is also hindered by its uneven script not to mention obvious budget and scheduling issues.

Well made enough to entertain as part of a double or triple feature of Willis titles at home on a Saturday night, for the most part, Reprisal distracts us from asking too many questions, aside from why of course an ex-cop like Bruce Willis's James finds himself so often stuck in a single room unless that's all they had time for before he was due to report for another movie.

Fortunately, since it's been nearly a week since the film debuted on Blu, we don't have to wait too long for the next Bruce Willis (or Nic Cage) premiere. Likewise, given the intriguing place where Hammons ends Jacob's storyline in the film, I wouldn't be surprised if pretty soon we get another Reprisal, with not only three times as many trailers but even more scenes of Bruce Willis giving his neighbor crime stopping advice from a (hopefully new) stationary location.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Sin City (2005) -- Recut, Extended, Unrated 2-Disc Edition

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A.K.A. Frank Miller's Sin City

To hear Frank Miller explain it, the creation of Sin City was one he undertook for the most selfish reasons in deciding to build a comic book around all of the things he enjoyed drawing the most such as fast cars, hot babes, and more. And of course, to match the images with the tone, it would all be carried out in the style of film noir complete with a Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane feel of hard-boiled insanity lurking around every dark corner.

Although, truth be told—we’re all united by taste and art is the greatest bridge upon which to build a relationship-- so with the unrelenting passion of super fan and digital filmmaking genius Robert Rodriguez who damn near stalked Miller down (contacting his editor, agent, and lawyer Godfather style), Miller realized he’d found a like-minded artist who was turned on by and tuned into the exact same things.



Flash-forward more than a decade and—eager to prove his worth and mettle for the material—Rodriguez invited Miller out to his very own Troublemaker Studios in Texas for one day to run a “test.” Humoring Rodriguez by obliging to visit-- all the while wondering what on Earth a filmmaker could accomplish in a single day—Rodriguez managed to round up A-list talent like Josh Hartnett with the plea of “I don’t have the rights; help me convince Miller” to shoot what is now the opening sequence of the film as the old-fashioned, handsome Hartnett startles a beautiful blonde on a rooftop, mistakes her into trusting him for a smoke and embrace before she’s left dead for reasons unknown.

Needless to say, Miller was dazzled and honored by just how incredibly faithful Rodriguez was to his material as the two collaborated as co-directors on one of the most surprisingly visceral, visually spectacular cinematic works of 2005—complete with one mini-macabre comedy sequence filmed by guest director Quentin Tarantino-- whom Rodriguez hoped to seduce with technology as a gateway drug to encourage QT to move from film stock to all-digital filmmaking. It didn't work but boy, did Tarantino have fun as he's all over the Blu-ray and commentary tracks.

Joking that despite the enormity of the three men’s egos they were still able to get along, Miller stated that he wouldn’t have relinquished the rights to Sin City if he hadn’t had the opportunity to help direct. Throwing out the idea of a screenwriting credit and even alienating the Director’s Guild of America by Rodriguez’s incredible vision and determination to bring Miller in on the same level, he decided he didn’t want to simply make a movie of the comic but instead use the medium of cinema and turn that into the comic since at their core, he argues that they’re very similar mediums that both use still images.

The best evidence of this theorem you can see below in the aforementioned rooftop scene beginning with Miller’s drawing, the use of the green screen during production, only to digitally transform the background in the post-process to the startling and riveting finished product.





Relishing in every opportunity to be as deliciously twisted or lurid as possible—watching the film again today on Blu-ray, a few years after seeing it for a paper I wrote on modern day neo-noirs in film school—it dawned on me that for those who were disappointed by the Grindhouse film undertaken by Rodriguez and Tarantino with their respective contributions-- Planet Terror and Death Proof respectively--Sin City is the answer.

Moreover, you can see how well all the time spent watching "grindhouse" movies in the ‘70s was put to use in this alternatively exploitative and disturbing yet compelling and mesmerizing contradiction of a trashy masterpiece.

Although the second disc of this astounding Blu-ray transfer gives the filmmakers the opportunity to present the complete unrated, recut and extended version of the film which adds on a little more than twenty minutes and gives you the opportunity to watch the individual stories unfold one at a time with four specific breakdowns—aside from the Hartnett cameo that opens and closes the work-- essentially the film can be broken down into three distinct stories all directly pulled from Miller’s series of graphic novels.

A cross between vintage film noir with a bit of the old west spirit thrown into the mix (and not simply just in the scene with exotic dancer Jessica Alba whipping up the crowd with her lasso)-- the film’s characters who populate the eponymous Sin City aren’t presented to us in the traditional white hat/black hat or good guy/bad guy Hollywood standard, instead showing us the evil and the good side by side and on both sides of the law as in the case of the film’s standout storyline.

This finds Bruce Willis’ dedicated cop John Hartigan ignoring his doctor’s orders and warnings about angina in order to save eleven year old Nancy Callahan from the clutches of a sadistic pedophile, who is incidentally the son of a powerful politician. When his partner turns on Hartigan and leaves him for dead-- pinning all crimes involved on Hartigan-- he gets locked up for eight years trading his freedom to save the beautiful little girl he’d rescued who sends him weekly letters under the pen-name of “Cordelia” until one day they suddenly stop.

Fearful that she’s either grown too old to write pen pal letters to the cop that had saved her life or that something has happened to Nancy—and not knowing which thought is worse to Hartigan who states that her written words were the only thing that kept him from killing himself—he confesses to the crimes he didn’t commit and ventures back into the dimly lit, dicey streets to hopefully rescue Nancy once again.

Of course, by this point in the nonlinear narrative that jumps around with characters and storylines that overlap and blend together unexpectedly, we’ve realized that Nancy is none other than the beautiful Jessica Alba who has fallen in love with her childhood hero. But, unfortunately endings are never traditionally happy in the world of noir and especially not in the realm of Miller’s Sin City as the same themes of love, loss, and revenge are woven throughout the other tales.




Featuring a nearly unrecognizable Mickey Rourke as the battered Marv who falls in love with the angelic “perfect woman” Goldie-- a one night stand to whom he awakens to find dead,-- he tears throughout the city in order to avenge the woman he considers his true love, enlisting the help of others including his tough but tender lesbian parole officer Carla Gugino who maternally reminds him to take his anti-psychotic medication without which he has a tendency to hallucinate.

Worried that he’s been led down the wrong path by his own mind playing tricks on him, Rourke’s Marv gets far more than he bargained for when he starts down a horrifying maze of bloodshed, insanity, cannibalism, conspiracy, and mad science that are far beyond his worst nightmares.

In the fascinating but a bit overly long and meandering middle storyline that boasts a ridiculous number of gifted actors including Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Alexis Bledel and others—the tone changes from darkly comic to terrifying as the talkative, flirtatious barmaid, Shellie (Brittany Murphy) tries to stop her married, old abusive boyfriend (Del Toro) from busting down her door where she’s presently with her new one (Owen).

And despite the fact that Del Toro has brought along a group of heavy-hitters with weapons, we all know that the man who should’ve been James Bond can easily take ‘em down as Owen chases them off into the night, venturing into Old Town which is coincidentally run by the women of the night who look after their own and exact their own brand of justice.

When things get out of hand and Del Toro’s character is killed before they discover his profession as a police officer, Owen and his ex—the dominatrix styled Rosario Dawson—begin preparing for an all-out war. Not willing to let the mafia or the cops take Old Town from the women, Dawson and her motley crew of nubile, scantily clad but deadly divas strap on guns, ropes, and ammo in a standoff that lasts far too long when a double-cross enters the equation and too much time is spent explaining what we’re seeing in a way that would’ve benefited from tighter editing.

While the men are mostly out for the kill whether it’s in the name of love, revenge, or insanity (and sure enough the second disc boasts an interactive "killing" game) and the women are either damsels in distress or vixens—essentially, the work is a depiction of violence at its most primal and carnal. Additionally, it's one that never shies away from its exploitative tendency (repeatedly on display throughout the oeuvre of Robert Rodriguez from the most over-the-top sex scene in Desperado and beyond) but despite this, the film keeps you watching for the sheer audacious aesthetic appreciation of the groundbreaking techniques employed in its creation.

Primarily filmed in black and white with flashes of color whether it’s in a woman’s blue eyes, red lips, a dress, blonde hair, blood, or the personification of evil in the form of the monstrous “Yellow Bastard"-- Sin City is that rare film you find yourself wanting to turn away from but realize you’re unable to do so since you’re riveted by this wholly creative, free-wheeling, yet painstakingly precise world concocted by Miller and Rodriguez.

While Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Miramax have managed to nail down the Blu-ray format to an exact science with recent releases, they’ve truly outdone themselves in what has to be the second most impressive Blu-ray of the year, closely following their amazing restoration and multi-disc presentation of Pinocchio.

The level of clarity in the sound and picture makes Sin City honestly a film that looks much richer on Blu-ray than it did in the theatre as it was originally filmed with high-definition Sony cameras, so its move right into 1080 pixels helps reaffirm that for Sin City’s origins as a digital picture, “there’s no place like home” on Blu-ray.

While in these economic times, I’m usually pretty cautious in recommending readers upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray unless there’s a marked difference in quality or features viewers truly want-- I have zero hesitation this time around in advising you to move directly to Blu without passing go.

Having fun with the format itself and equipping the film with D-Box motion control along with three different audio tracks (including commentary and one Austin Audience Reaction track), you’re also given the opportunity on the first disc alone of utilizing the “Cine-Explore” feature that incorporates behind the scenes extras into the viewing experience itself.

Giving viewers the freedom to watch the individual stories separately on the second Blu-ray in their longer, uncut forms—Rodriguez continues with his grand tradition of loading discs with some truly first rate bonus features such as his short “15-Minute Film School,” along with a surprising inclusion of a “10-Minute Cooking School.”

While some of the extras are fun but not quite necessary like the cooking lesson and Willis rocking with his band—the making-of-featurettes are all quite interesting breaking down the film from the costumes, special effects, props, to interviews and play-by-play recollections with Miller, Rodriguez and Tarantino such as in the one I cited at the start of this review, “How It Went Down: Convincing Frank Miller To Make The Film.”

Although unfortunately as filmgoers master the art of digital technology and that irresistible green screen that makes anything and everything possible and unfortunately sometimes making films feel a bit cooler, artificial, and uninvolving like the beautiful but vacuous recent Miller release The Spirit-- in Sin City it feels absolutely essential in transferring the comic to the screen.

Therefore, it makes one even more excited for the 2010 announced sequel as surely Rodriguez’s wizardry and penchant for digital invention will have the opportunity to climb even greater heights five years after the first film was made.

What Just Happened (2008)

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Admittedly, the shooting of a dog in No Country for Old Men may have added to the brutal ambiance needed for the Coen Brother's allegorical depiction of a country that's "hard on people," in earning it the Academy Award for Best Picture. However, when it comes to mainstream cinema, putting two in the chest of a beloved family pet is hardly the way to win people over at a test screening. Hollywood producer Ben (Robert De Niro) learns this lesson the hard way in fake Technicolor blood as he watches his latest edgy film Fiercely-- directed by a British nail-polish wearing ticking temper-tantrum time bomb Jeremy (Michael Wincott) -- send audience members either fleeing for the exits or leaving scathing notes on his comment cards ranging from "my wife is still crying" to the one-worded question, "why?"

While Jeremy is just one of several characters in director Barry Levinson's hilarious adaptation of screewnwriter Art Linson's fictionalized and far more satirical version of his bestselling 2002 insider memoir who pleads "artistic integrity" the way most mobsters take the fifth in court, the bottom line is changes need to be made or the film will not only lose millions, further jeopardize Ben's dwindling "power credentials" but possibly end careers as well. Putting it bluntly, Catherine Keener's two-faced cutthroat studio executive Lou (another one of her fascinating creations reminiscent of her ball-breaking turn in Being John Malkovich), demands that either both Jeremy and Ben makes the changes or she'll take away the film and cut it herself. Although Jeremy is sent into hysterics and Ben's wise, young assistant is kicked out of the room when she suggests that the film's edge could've been the reason its star Sean Penn (appearing in the film as himself) signed on, Ben knows it is all part of the game. And it's the same game he plays twenty times a day at a breathlessly breakneck pace over fourteen hellish days that take him from La La Land to Cannes.

And throughout Levinson's film, Ben juggles his responsibilities as a devoted dad driving his children (from two marriages) to school, endlessly chatting away on his cell phone earpiece, trying to come to terms with his feelings for his soon to be ex-wife Kelly (Robin Wright Penn), massaging egos and holding the hands of his temperamental colleagues, hearing pitches at school drop-offs, listening to Morricone while stuck in traffic, or trying to figure out how to persuade Bruce Willis (also playing himself) to shave a beard for his role to maximize leading man sex appeal.

While it’s nowhere near the same league as Altman’s masterful film The Player-- as the latest in a long line of insider comedy/dramas, refreshingly What Just Happened is much more successful than this year's other Hollywood insider-comedy Tropic Thunder. And this is precisely because in making it a human story first and foremost, it also makes the situations both accessible and believable, without solely playing to only those well-versed in film industry knowledge.

Additionally, De Niro's quiet, contemplative and fascinatingly restrained character that always seems to be spreading himself far too thin marks one of the actor's best performances in years. Getting the chance to be both funny and endearing and never slipping into the caricature that helped propel the success of the Meet the Parents films, it's a wonderful change of pace for De Niro devotees such as myself (for proof click here) to see Bobby D playing the most level-headed one in the room when Bruce Willis pleads "artistic integrity" and trashes a room filled with costumes before stomping off to his trailer. As Linson noted in the press release, De Niro "instinctively knew that a man hanging over a ledge in Hollywood is desperately funny and true. He ferociously inhaled that idea and the rest of us followed," as his character tries to "hold his family together while navigating through," as Levin called it--- the Hollywood "battlefield."

Shot in just thirty-three days, the artistry of the film's look is quite impressive with fast-cuts, intriguing sound and visual cues, and the stunning photography of lensman Stephane Fontaine. Likewise it’s one of those films that seems as though it must've been as enjoyable to make as it is to watch as it's filled with what feel like spontaneous little touches by scene-stealing players like Wincott (truly one of the most hilarious people in the film), John Turturro, Stanley Tucci, and Bruce Willis (courageously playing the worst version of himself). Although initially, I feared it would feel like most indulgent Hollywood industry comedies where we're all showing up as extra guests at a party to which we really shouldn't have been invited (and film buffs instinctively get the impression of "who called who" when realizing the overlapping credits of those involved), upon the first viewing, it's an overwhelming whirlwind as we try to keep up with Ben's chaotic lifestyle.

However, during the second time around, I realized that despite its ridiculously jaded setting where a man's facial hair can put hundreds of people out of work, it's a great, artistic glimpse of a life lived at full-speed, under too much pressure like a bulb ready to burn out from overuse which is something to which most Americans multitasking during their waking hours can definitely relate --that is before our inevitable crash of however long we sleep before doing the exact same thing again. And while the great thing is that, unlike Ben's life, ours isn't spent under the microscope, it's nice to be able to laugh at the problems of the little things times ten magnified Hollywood style, whether it's in the over-the-top bravura performance of Jeremy or in some truly great, organic humor between Robin Wright Penn and Robert De Niro as they attend a couple's therapy where the ultimate goal is to keep them apart as opposed to bringing them together.

While What Just Happened is used as both a question by Wright Penn in the film in a throwaway line near the end (and honestly makes for a lackluster title destined to be forgotten once the film ends), it also seems to be the name of Ben's game in explaining to everyone what just happened regarding any given situation, no matter how unbelievable it is. And as the film careens into an overly long yet terrifically unpredictable windup, it will most likely have you going over what exactly happened during your drive home. Just don’t forget to pack the Morricone but maybe—unless you want to end up in soon to be ex-couple’s therapy-- leave your Bluetooth earpiece at home.

Read the Book that Started it All & More from Art Linson

Explore the Soundtrack (CD or MP3)

The Incredible Robert De Niro