action

Segel and Weaving are clearly having the time of their lives, trading insults with the ease of a couple who’ve had years to sharpen them. The best running gag is physical: injuries accrue and stay, so by the closing stretch Segel genuinely looks like a man who’s been through everything the film has put him through. War of the Roses crossed with cartoon splatter, and mostly a delight. Less charming is the mid-film swerve into a rape threat played for tension. It doesn’t land, and the film would lose nothing without it. Plenty of fun regardless.

Inspired by a Guardian ranked list, I’ve decided to spend the summer rewatching John Cusack films—I’m not sure why, but I’ve been rather obsessed with him for about 35 years—and where better to start than one of the most insane films of the 90s. It was intended as an action film, but it works far better in hindsight as a dark comedy: a postmodern blend of Top Gun, The Rock, Speed, and Face/Off, celebrating and unwittingly sending up those sorts of films by sheer excess.

An absurd premise, stacked cast, bonkers juxtapositions of scene, score and dialogue, an audience set up to cheer for a cannibalistic child killer’s escape to freedom… I ought to watch this more often. Cusack plays his honest, moralistic US Marshal straight as the madness unfolds around him.

It was today I realised that this and The Other Guys are different films. Cleverly written, sharply directed, and Gosling is, as ever, a delight. Keith David and Kim Basinger perhaps a little wasted.

Most of Riz Ahmed’s acting happens through his eyes—Ash barely speaks aloud, his lines passed through a telephone relay operator. That constraint sharpens everything, and it’s all gruff exchanges, mailed packages and payphone protocols. Then the ending arrives, and it crumbles. A script this fastidious about process shouldn’t ask you to swallow quite that much.

The sketch-to-feature problem is real (you can feel the last twenty minutes stretching), but the hit rate on individual gags is high enough to carry it. Impressively stupid, in the most complimentary sense.

There is absolutely no need for either Damon or Affleck to be in this, although they do improve it.

I clicked on this expecting some unfunny Stranger Things parody and instead I got Scott Pilgrim + The Warriors + every Tarantino film. Based on those expectations, it was surprisingly good, even if it’s all been done a thousand times before.

I had exceedingly low expectations and it just about surpassed them.