Set in New York City and written by someone with an outdated understanding of the Brooklyn-Manhattan dynamic, the backdrop serves merely as an aesthetically appealing and familiar setting to assure the viewer that this is actually a movie and not some shitty YouTube video your friend is trying to show you. Evidently written by foreigners with a cursory understanding of cinematic platitudes, I can only imagine the script was conceived by throwing a blindfolded writer in a room who was then told to point at random words written on the wall until there was enough to fill and hour and half.
Not only is the dialogue clunky, but Liam Hemsworth's deliverance of it is marred even further by a completely emotionless performance. He's like a barely sentient cardboard cutout that finds its way into scenes with the intention of displaying its biceps. He reads his lines like a Garmin GPS giving directions, occasionally raising his eyebrows to demonstrate that he's at least an expensive animatronic. But Hemsworth isn't the only aloof thespian in this merry band of players. His friend and archetypically nerdy friend wanders in, apparently reading his lines on the palm of his hand when we aren't looking. I expect this type of acting from a kindergarten play put on before a sea of miserable parents. I'm 20 years old and I already know what it feels like to be disappointed in a child.
There's a plot, or so I am led to believe by the dialogue that vaguely implies a preceding scene. This elusive storyline opens on a business team lead by Hemsworth, presumably because he was bigger than the rest of them and established his dominance by beating his chest on the first day. His team is made up of the aforementioned nerd, an annoying guy in red pants that just has to be a producer's son, and two girls to balance out the averages.
The acting delivered by this supporting cast of characters ranges from amateur to "reading the script behind a Wendy's and hoping it doesn't end up being porn." Needless to say, this distracts almost entirely from the atrocious script that underlies this parade of vomit inducing "acting." So it least it has that going for it.
During the brief times I occasionally noticed the plot, I learned several things: there is only club worth going to in New York City and it's got a very patient bouncer with an iPad, Amber Heard really wants Liam Hemsworth to leave her alone, Gary Oldman is better at chess than Liam Hemsworth, and that the script was clearly written by a man that just discovered that feminism was a thing. You almost can't get mad at the innocently sexist overtones during every conversation concerning females. Almost.
Amber Heard brings an irritation to every scene that brings out some of the best acting in the film. To be clear, this is still pushing against the tide of an absurdly bad script, but her perpetually miffed demeanor is accomplished in part by what must be honest and real revulsion towards the lines she is being forced to read. Cast as the clichéd and, frankly, rather insulting "bitchy, irritable woman trying to break into the boy's club," you can almost see Heard lift her head up from the script after every scene and sigh, "Really, guys?"
It's a full thirty minutes into the movie and there still hasn't been a sturdy groundwork laid. The already shaky plot coupled with a weak script comes tumbling down before it can even announce its presence. The next hour is spent picking surviving plot points from the wreckage, piecing together a mediocre story from the disaster. The time between actual meaningful, story driving dialogue increases as the movie progresses, leaving long periods of awkward dead air in which the actors stare at each other, visibly uncomfortable.
The arrival of Harrison Ford on to the scene only drives the stake deeper into the writhing carcass of this film. There's something morally deplorable about watching Han Solo/Indiana Jones fumble through a script so rife with terrible lines at it physically pains him to read it. I can only imagine Ford is here to make enough money to buy his wife a nice birthday present.
At this point in the plot, about halfway through the movie, things are just sort of fucking happening with no rhyme or reason. There is no attempt being made to connect things and it's rapidly devolving into anarchy. Characters pop out of nowhere to say shit. Hemsworth's friend randomly shows up at his office to bitch about the job he didn't get in a Tucker Carlson inspired outfit that makes you wonder why he should have gotten it in the first place. But bemoaning the lack of connection with the characters in this travesty seems like a hat on a hat. There isn't even a shadow of an expectation that the audience should feel empathy for any of these bland caricatures. Besides Hemsworth's mildly sick father and a passing reference to his long dead mother, the emotional charge is nonexistent, opting for a series of situations in which ridiculous sounding humans exchange clumsily written scripts until someone tells them that they can go home.
Ford's gruff and prickly temperament eventually can't contain itself any longer and comes across through the script as tired and just-fucking-through-with-it. He delivers every line with the hope that it will be the last thing he has to say. Part of you hopes that they'll have mercy and kill off his character so that the poor man can go home and spend his remaining time on earth with his family.
The story doesn't build up to an ending so much as it runs flailing towards the finish line, falling in a pathetic slump at the end. The final thirty minutes of the movie are spent desperately trying to convince you that there is some sort of suspense to be felt, but instead you're left with the impression that several out of sequence events were edited together to finish up a movie the actors lost heart in during their initial five minutes on set.
Much like Hemsworth's character, the movie aspires to be a Gordon Gekko but only ever amounts to an incompetent and, inevitably, unsuccessful Jordan Belfort clone. Cashing in on the most recent spike in douchebags trying to make it big, the movie hits all the buzz words (finance, technology, espionage) without any of the complexity. A superficial pile of trite and incoherent crap that barely qualifies as a film. Ultimately, the movie produces no apparent moral, offers up nothing in the way of critical thought and fails to resonate at all, leaving only the lasting impression of nausea that one normally associates with consuming 90 minutes worth of shit.
On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I give this movie the faint blinking of a passing airplane you mistook for a star.
As you may have noticed, the above is a movie review. Not my normal purview, but in trying to expand this blog's reach, I thought it may be interesting to watch a really bad movie and review it weekly. This is the first test of that feature. Hopefully you like it! If it gets enough of a response, I may continue this as a recurring post. If not, it will languish in the halls of failed blog features. Either way, hit me with your feedback and give any blog suggestions you have. They may or may not be taken into consideration. Thanks for reading!
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