I'm a sucker for Sam Rockwell. When you add in Christopher Walken and Woody Harrelson, you have just created a film that I will watch, regardless of the story. So why try to get around it? Check out the red band trailer for Seven Psychopaths:
Judging from the trailer, Seven Psychopaths is writer/director Martin McDonagh's attempt to make a fast-paced heist movie, along the lines of Snatch, but in English and with better dialogue. McDonagh's first film (he is also a playwright) was the surprisingly enjoyable In Bruges; at first glance, it looks like he was trying to keep the humor, but up the pace with his follow-up. And there is nothing wrong with that approach --- I bet McDonagh could make one hell of a great breakneck crime flick. But that's not what he's going for with Seven Psychopaths, although it takes a little while for that to become clear to the audience.
Although there are hints that things will get weird
Marty (Colin Farrell) is a successful screenwriter suffering from writer's block. The script he is working on is titled "Seven Psychopaths," but he's having trouble actually coming up with any characters. That's where Billy (Sam Rockwell) comes in. Billy is Marty's best friend, but he's not a particularly good influence. Instead of working, Billy and Hans (Christopher Walken) kidnap dogs and then collect reward money when the owners post flyers around the neighborhood. Billy is trying to help Marty finish his script, although nothing seems to be working. That's why Billy puts an ad in the paper for psychopaths to contact Marty to tell him their stories.
...which ultimately leads to Tom Waits carrying a bunny during a firefight
Meanwhile, it seems that Billy and Hans have made a mistake in their choice of dognappings. Instead of a spoiled trophy wife's pet, they picked up a shih tzu belonging to a violent mob boss (Woody Harrelson).
That would be pretty bad, but they could theoretically give the dog back on the sly and hopefully avoid any violent repercussions. Well, they could if Billy was a rational human being. By holding on to the dog, the mob boss is able to identify the dognappers and send his underlings out to kill them. Unless there happens to be some other psychopath on the loose, killing killers (and there is!). So what do we wind up with? A homicidal criminal out for revenge, a random killer on the loose, a confused and mostly drunk writer, an idiotic dognapper, and Christopher Walken. And that is when the story takes an unusual turn, a metafictional turn that is better experienced than explained.
This is what you expect, but you get something slightly different
The acting in Seven Psychopaths is some of the better comedic work I have seen in a while. As the mostly normal point-of-view character, Colin Farrell does a great job being surprised and helpless; he is mainly reacting to the other actors here, but he's refined the acting capabilities of his eyebrows as he's gotten older. Sam Rockwell, as usual, was a bizarre delight. Rockwell plays goofy exceedingly well, but he is exceptional when given a good script. Christopher Walken was unmistakably Christopher Walken. Some might argue that he's leaning into self-parody territory these days, but I love seeing him in good movies --- especially ones where his weirdness doesn't stand out more than anybody else's.
If I walked into my home and found Christopher Walken, I would expect him to look like this
Woody Harrelson clearly benefited from a script full of amusingly foul things to say. Harrelson is a good actor, but he's at his best when playing up his comedy roots, and he does absurd comedy as well as anybody in mainstream Hollywood.
"Somebody cast me in a Coen Brothers movie! A comedy, this time!"
The rest of the cast has what amounts to featured cameos. Some of them, like Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko and Harry Dean Stanton, don't get to do much, although their parts move the plot forward. Others, like Michael Pitt, Gabourey Sidibe and Kevin Corrigan, receive little screen time but compensate by having chunks of pretty great dialogue. Even the actors playing straight roles, like Zeljko Ivanek, turn in quality character work. Of all the supporting cast, Tom Waits has the meatiest and strangest role, although it is easily the least bizarre movie role I have seen of his. It's always a pleasant surprise when you watch a movie and see only good acting in it, and it's a treat seeing an ensemble cast having this much fun.
More entertaining than it appears
Martin McDonagh clearly has a talent for getting the best from his actors, although the more readily apparent skill would be writing awesome dialogue. Here's where McDonagh succeeds where Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarentino often fail: he actually develops his one-dimensional characters. It would have been extremely easy to make Marty the soul of this movie --- he's the only remotely normal main character, after all --- but he went out of his way to show the pain of almost every goofy-ass character in this script.
Exception noted, Mr. Harrelson
The technical side of the film was all done well enough (I liked the cinematography, although it was never too showy), but it is the writing that stands out the most.
That is a good thing and a bad thing. The good side I have already explained --- funny script, unexpected depth, etc. --- but the bad side comes into play about halfway through the film. It gets meta. I'm not a huge fan of metafiction, but I can appreciate when it is done well. Thankfully, Seven Psychopaths doesn't screw it up or get too pretentious. This is probably my favorite metafictional movie since Adaptation. It's not that the movie has a metafictional aspect to it that bothers me --- it's that that aspect doesn't really come into play until the film is half over. It felt like the script suddenly sobered up at the 45-minute mark and decided to put off the predictably silly and violent ending that it was so clearly heading toward in the first half of the film. Had the meta been more prevalent earlier in the movie (or less prevalent later), this would have been far more effective. Still, Seven Psychopaths is a blast to watch.
As we all are quite aware, these are the days of high-profile franchise reboots/re-imaginings/just-plain-remakes. Not that Hollywood has ever been a bastion of creativity, mind you, but there do seem to be a lot of these things floating around nowadays. Like many people, I tend to treat these reboots with cynicism. When I heard about Dredd (the remake of Judge Dredd), though, I was all for it. Why? Because the Stallone/Schneider movie is terrible. If you're going to remake a movie, it's easier to improve a crappy one than a classic.
Man, the future sucks. Most of the world is an irradiated wasteland. Everyone left in America lives in Mega-City One, a sprawling concrete jungle that runs from Boston to Washington, DC. Older buildings are left to decay, while super-skyscraper tenements house much of the population. There are 17,000 crimes reported in the city each day, and there is only enough manpower in the police force to respond to 6% of those calls. The police of Mega-City One are called Judges, and are allowed to act as judge, jury and executioner for any crime they come upon. Dredd is the story of just another day for one such Judge, Judge Dredd (Karl Urban).
In the future, the police will smell all your farts and hold you accountable
Judge Dredd is given a probationary officer named Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) to assess. Normally, Anderson would not be up for evaluation, as she failed her basic Judge testing --- but she happens to be the most powerful psychic on record, and the Department of Justice wants to make use of that talent. The first crime Dredd and Anderson respond to is a triple homicide at the Peach Tree super-tenement. What starts out as a simple murder bust quickly gets out of hand when the local drug lord, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) decides to make the entire 200-story building a war zone, with hundreds of people gunning for the Judges.
Trust me, these civilians are not as nice as they look
The acting in Dredd was a bit of a surprise to me, and I mean that in a good way. Karl Urban did a good job deadpanning his way through this role; this is a part that was never meant for character development, and Urban kept steady throughout the film. I was surprised that he never removed his helmet during the film, but swallowing his vanity helped keep Dredd the unemotional Dirty Harry clone that he should be. I was even more impressed by Olivia Thirlby. She had the unpleasant job of being the rookie character that is going to be squeamish and stupid and wrong all the time, and yet she was surprisingly effective at providing an emotional core to this film. I don't know if Dredd needed an emotional core, but it has one, and it was handled well. Lena Headey was also very good as the wicked Ma-Ma. Headey is becoming one of the better evil bitches in Hollywood, and she convincingly held her own in this ultra-macho action movie.
A beautiful woman that isn't treated as a sex object in an action movie: how novel!
Wood Harris was solid as a mean thug, and Domhnall Gleeson was pretty good as a weenie computer tech guy, but even they were essentially props for the three main characters to work around. Still, I can honestly say that I enjoyed three actors in the remake of Judge Dredd. How bizarre is that?
Dredd was directed by Pete Travis, and it is the first film of his I've seen. He made some solid choices with Dredd. While it is tempting to show off all sorts of technology and cool stuff when making a dystopian future film, Travis wisely chose to narrow this film's focus and keep the ball rolling. The majority of the story happens inside the Peach Tree skyscraper, and the idea of the Judges being hunted by the inhabitants of Peach Tree is in place by the 30-minute mark. The rest of the movie is a firefight, and the earlier half-hour was also action-packed.
The storyboards for this scene just read "traffic"
Travis showcases the action well, but he also does a good job at pacing the film, throwing the Judges into one shitstorm after another. That would have been more than enough to make this better than Judge Dredd, but Travis also added some humanity (via Anderson's character) and did some very cool work with the slow-motion sequences, too. I loved that the slow-motion was utilized as part of the story, and the refracted light in those scenes was a nice touch.
Slow-motion as part of the story? Someone needs to tell Zack Snyder!
Of course, having Dredd shoot people while they are high on a drug that makes them see slow-motion rainbows also helps make this movie what it is. To sum it up, I plan on seeing the next Pete Travis action movie in theaters.
In a movie about police officers who are allowed and encouraged to kill criminals, the main attraction for Dredd is always going to be the action. And Dredd delivers. This is a rare beast in the modern cinema jungle: an honest-to-goodness body count movie. There are so many kills that I stopped counting within the first fifteen minutes. With so many death scenes, they are not all going to be examples of gory excess, but there are some spectacular examples of bad-ass glorification of violence. How about a slow-motion bullet to the face?
...or, possibly, a retro advertisement for Gushers?
If that doesn't do it for you, perhaps you would like a bullet that lights a fire inside a criminal's skull?
When I am police chief, we will call this ammo "default"
Dredd is easily the most violent movie of 2012 that I have seen, and it is also among the best action movies of the year.
Dredd probably isn't going to win over any new fans, though. The ultra-violence can be a turn-off, and there is oodles of it. There were some unexpected gems in this film, things that curious viewers will appreciate if they choose to watch. For starters, the science-fiction in this movie is handled with a soft touch. Sure, the Judges have guns that respond to voice commands, but most of the futuristic technology is subtle and left unexplained. This film hints at a world with interesting bio-implants and bizarre tattoos, but the filmmakers were content to leave those stories unexplained, as background dressing. Even more impressive was the portrayal of women. Most of the time, women in action movies are there to look pretty and (fingers crossed) find their way into various stages of undress. Not in Dredd. Both female leads are tough, strong, and essentially asexual; that works even better with Judge Dredd, because he is equally asexual.
"I get hard for the law"
They are just three tough people, trying to shoot the hell out of some folks. Dredd also brings with it one of my favorite martial arts movie tropes: the building full of bad guys. This is underutilized in English-speaking films. Why go to exotic locations, when you can keep everything compact and tense, with literally hundreds of potential enemies? I love action movies that don't bother with elaborate excuses and just go for the action.
I can't say that Dredd is exactly what it needs to be, though, even though I like a lot of things about it. There are some minor visual complaints, like the fact that it was very difficult to differentiate between Judges during a fight scene.
At least two of these are not Karl Urban, that's all I can say for sure
The bigger problem for me was the lack of humor in the script. I don't mean to imply that I missed Rob Schneider by any means, but this material deserves more dark humor. Urban did a great job delivering his lines with a spot-on deadpan. All he needed was a script that made some of the lines just a little bit funnier.
Genuine appreciation, or does the frown show ironic approval of a bad parent? You decide.
That's not much of a complaint, when you think about the source material. Dredd could have been utter trash. Easily. Instead, it is an unrelenting action movie with enough violence for three shoot-em-ups. There's a fine line between nonstop action and brainless blood orgy, but Dredd toes the line with style and winds up one of the year's biggest surprises.
When spending an entire month reviewing horror movies, you've got to revisit some of the classics, right? I didn't watch Audition (or, Ôdishon in its native Japanese) when it first came out. Once I had been exposed to the true awesomeness of Asian horror, though, I tracked it down --- and it left an impression on me. There are not a whole lot of movies that make me physically cringe when recalling them, but Audition is certainly one. Over the years, it has built up a solid reputation, making some best-of-the-decade horror lists and it was prominently listed among Bravo's scariest films countdown (that link is totally worth checking out, by the way), but I've never gone back to it. Until now. Wish me luck.
By the way, am I the only one who fins it hilarious that the Japanese word for "Audition" is "Ôdishon"? It's spelled and pronounced the same way Jerry Lewis would have said it while doing a really offensive Japanese impression, back in the 1960s. Is it racist to laugh at something because you realize it's racist? I hope not.
Audition begins with Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) playing the part of a hard-working widower. He spends time with his teenage son, Shigehiko(Tetsu Sawaki), and they clearly care about each other, but...well, they're dudes, and dudes don't talk touchy-feely stuff. Especially in Japan's emotionally conservative culture. Still, they're as affectionate as they can be, although it often takes the form of awkwardness.
"Thanks Dad, I had hoped you would say something creepy tonight"
One day, Shigehiko straight up tells his father to find a girlfriend. Apparently, all it took for Shigeharu to rejoin the dating pool was for his son to sign his permission slip. But Shigeharu is not a young man anymore. How is he supposed to find the right woman? Bar hopping? No way. Shigeharu's work buddy has a bright idea, though. Since they are in the entertainment business, they will find a pitch for a TV show and set up a casting audition for the lead part. That way, they can have the ladies come to them, instead of the other way around.
"We're looking for women who like having their aspirations toyed with"
During the audition process, Shigeharu finds himself smitten with the very demure Asami (Eihi Shiina). He asks her out, and they start dating. The more he gets to know about her, the more he likes her. And while Asami does seem very sweet, she also seems a little...off. It's nothing concrete, but Shigeharu's friend notices it and tries to learn more about her. No dice. None of her references can be contacted. None of them. He can't even find any official record of her. Well, that's probably not that big of a deal. After all, it's not like she is obsessively focused on Shigeharu and spends her entire day doing literally nothing until he calls.
Even without the mystery sack, this shot creeps me out
Shigeharu continues his relationship with Asami until she abruptly vanishes. Desperate to find his new love, Shigeharu starts doing his own investigation into her past. And let's just say that what he finds, disturbing as it is, is nothing compared to what she has in store for him.
The store she shops at is Crazy Mart, and she cleaned them out
Audition is fairly unique among modern horror movies because it takes its time. It's not just that the movie has a slow pace, either (although it does). The entire movie builds up to the last fifteen minutes. Up until that point, Audition feels more like a romance than a horror film. If it wasn't for the single scene of Asami waiting for the phone to ring (and the reaction of the monster in her burlap bag), the last act would be a complete shock. But with that single, short, bizarre scene, Audition whets your appetite and the suspense starts to build. Most of the time, when a movie builds the suspense for over an hour, the payoff is a little underwhelming. Not when the movie is a horror film from director Takashi Miike, though. Miike is known for his absolutely ludicrous movies, and he doesn't skimp out with Audition.
To give you an idea of the horror, tongue injections are "the good old days" in Audition
This is the best storytelling effort from Miike that I have seen (so far). As absolutely bizarre as Miike can get with his films, he did a pretty good job of constructing a convincing love story in the first hour of Audition. All the characters are pretty likable and, in a typical romance movie, could have eventually been described as "precious." But then Miike decides to bring the pain. It's not what is done that is so horrifying --- although it absolutely is scary --- it is that Miike was able to get such a gleeful performance from Eihi Shiina while she was doing it.
This is her reaction to dismemberment
I've never thought of Takashi Miike as a director who gets good performances from his actors, but Shiina in those last fifteen minutes...? Absolutely terrifying.
Audition hits a little close to home for me, because one of my greatest fears is that I will somehow upset a crazy woman. I know it's an irrational fear, because I'm a nice guy and I've married a woman who probably wouldn't torture me to death, but movies about batshit-crazy, take-no-prisoners, nothing-left-to-lose ladies freak me the hell out. Just thinking about the end of this movie makes me want to buy something nice for my wife, just to extend my miserable existence a few more days.
I probably won't buy her needles, though. Just in case.
If you do not want to see a movie with freakishly believable torture in it, you might want to skip Audition. The scenes are deceptively gory; you might flinch or close your eyes in those last few scenes, but there is actually very little gore in this film. There is a high WTF quotient, though.
Case in point
Even with the disorienting nature of the randomly weird scenes, the torture can be hard to stomach. It has nothing to do with the gore or the sound effects (although those are pretty great). It has everything to do with Eihi Shiina's performance. On paper, it might seem hilarious that the Japanese word for "deeper" sounds an awful lot like "kitty," but when Shiina is saying that with a smile, look out. Rarely have I seen such an abrupt, yet believable, turnaround in a character, but she was terrific. She was shy and humble at first, but there was just enough creepy desperation for her to feel inexplicably wrong; when she finally reveals her true colors, it is a surprise, but only in the degree of crazy she turns out to be.
First clue: she ordered a glass of Homicidal Psycho Bitch on draft
As much as I legitimately love/hate the payoff to all the buildup in this film, there are some issues with Audition. The biggest is probably the abrupt way it ends; it's believable, but I was hoping for something to top the craziness that is the last fifteen minutes of the movie. The other is the symbolic dream sequence that occurs just before the torture. While I like its symbolism, it is fairly inconsistent by Western standards. If it had stuck to revelations and insights into the characters, it would be fine. However, it lets Shigeharu discover some clues that he could never have uncovered outside of the dream world, and I thought that cheapened the payoff. Thankfully, the revelations were really, truly weird, disgusting, and totally worth fitting into the film however they could, but there had to be a better way to do it. Japan seems to have a greater lenience for unexplained psychic phenomenon in their horror films, but that just felt out of place.
Kind of like asking "Do you like torture?" in an interview --- out of place, but probably worthwhile
One thing about Audition that surprised me during this, my second viewing: Shigeharu's friend never comes up with a convincing argument against Asami. All he has are vague misgivings. Really? It takes Shigeharu just a day to track down some disturbing information on her, but his friend, who has allegedly spent weeks digging, finds nothing? Hell, all he had to do was point out she was a dancer. It is a known fact that all dancers fall on the sliding scale of scary-craziness; the scale goes from 1 to 10, with Staying Alive a 1, Black Swan a 5, and Audition a 7. You don't want to know what a 10 looks like (hint: killer hammertoe).
As good as I think Audition is --- there are few movies that can build up to a single scene so effectively --- I can't say that it is a particularly fun movie to watch. Of course, that's not the intent, I know. But...I really mean it. This movie makes me uncomfortable. Part of it is the crazy lady core, and part of it is the torture, but I think it also has to do with the first hour. I love how effective Miike is at building the tension, but he doesn't really give the audience a good picture of these characters in the first hour. Shigeharu and his son are too good to be true, and we learn that in the dream sequence (for Shigeharu, anyway). I think keeping Asami a mystery is a good choice, but making Shigeharu a genuinely compelling character instead of a fairly generic nice guy would have pushed Audition from "effective" to "fantastic."
Do you ever hear about a movie, or see a trailer or something, and just know you will see that movie? I'm not talking about movies that you're excited to see, I'm talking about ones that you know will be inescapable? It doesn't matter how good or bad the movie looks, you know that you will eventually watch it. I feel that way about the Resident Evil and Underworld franchises; I don't like either, but I'm pretty sure I've seen every single one of them, usually because someone else says, "Hey, do you want to watch the new ___?" This is how I felt about ATM. The trailer made it look bad. But I knew I would be watching horror movies all October, and I knew it went straight to video-on-demand (always a good sign), so this was a date made by destiny. The question is whether destiny likes me or not.
ATM begins with David (Brian Geraghty) and Corey (Josh Peck) being awful at their day trading job. No worries, though; tonight is the office Christmas party, which means that the night is full of fancy cocktails and expensive whiskey!
Or...maybe it means "just like a frat party, but while wearing suits." Red cups? Really? David recognizes the party is his last chance to hit on Emily (Alice Eve), because it is her last day at the company, so he makes the most of it, in a clumsy and mostly ineffectual fashion. He does convince her to let him drive her home, since it is below zero outside and she can't seem to catch a cab. And she lives pretty far away, and it's pretty late, so she'll probably feel obliged to invite him in and, you know, ease his throbbing man-passion.
A guy going out of his way to help her? That's the most realistic part of ATM
There's just one hitch: Corey is a cheap bastard and a cock blocker, so he insists on David driving him home, too. Even though he lives in the opposite direction. And he wants to stop for food. But he has no cash, so they'll have to stop at an ATM.
"I know, I know. I'm a bastard. I've got a reservation for the ninth circle of Hell."
Naturally, since David wants to get his friend home as quickly as possible, he stops at any one of the hundreds of drive-thru ATMs attached to banks the last freestanding ATM in America. And I'm not talking about an ATM that is on a city street, or one that is in the lobby of a bank, or one that is inside a convenience store --- this one is a booth in the middle of an enormous parking lot. It's not even close to the road, so how did David know it was there? That's not important. What is important is that, to punish Corey for being a complete dick, David parks the car a few hundred feet away from the ATM entrance. So that whole "let's hurry" thing? Not as important as it seemed a few moments ago. Oh, but it turns out that Corey's ATM card isn't working, so David has to get out of the nice, warm car and loan his douchebag friend money so he can maybe get Emily home before she realizes he's incredibly boring. So he does. And then Emily joins them, because David turned the car off (Really?) and it got cold. Once they get the cash, they are about to leave, when...
...they see someone else in the parking lot. Holy. Fucking. Shit. And he's just...standing there, like a psychopath! Are they overreacting? Yes and no. Right when common sense was about to shame these morons into walking to their car like adults, the dude in the winter coat murders a guy who was taking his dog for a walk (through a parking lot?). This winter coat guy clearly means business, and by "business," I of course mean "murder." Thankfully, the ATM enclosure has heat, lighting, bulletproof glass, and a security door. But can that stop someone who is capable of such horror?
Look into the face of appropriately clothed evil and despair!
There are only three real characters in ATM, so breaking down the acting here will be thankfully brief. Brian Geraghty was timid and whiny when his character was supposed to be shy and likable. I don't ordinarily dislike Geraghty, but he took a role that should have at least been sympathetic and instead played the part like a little bitch. Alice Eve was more likable, but so is the killer. Eve was decent before the trio stopped at the ATM, and once she was there, her character played the weak link in the group. Her dialogue indicates that Eve did a decent job with the part, but her character was unrealistic and annoying. This is the first movie I have seen Josh Peck in, but I will congratulate him for making it out of Nickelodeon-child-actor-hood and not being a ham. He doesn't have nearly the weaselly charm that his character is supposed to have, but I thought he was a slight improvement over Geraghty's impression of a six-year-old girl with bladder problems.
"Why don't we have winter clothing, like that guy in the parking lot?"
While it is certainly not good, the acting is not the main problem with ATM. Is it the direction, though, or the writing? Let's look at the direction first. This is David Brooks' first attempt at directing a feature film. With a limited cast of characters, enclosed in a small space while someone tries to kill them, it would make sense for the director to have a firm hand on the tone of this film. He does not. There is no suspense in this movie. There is no tension. When a character tried to escape the ATM and wound up being clotheslined by some fishing wire in the parking lot, it should have been startling, or it should have elicited a gasp. I laughed until I couldn't stop coughing, and then I rewound and played it again to make sure I didn't miss anything.
...and this should look like terror instead of Alice Eve saying "hello" with a Kennedy accent
I blame Brooks for not seeing some of the problems in this script and trying to overcome them. Three people are willingly staying inside an ATM vestibule because a killer is outside, and yet they constantly lose track of where the killer is? How is that not a priority? Wouldn't someone be assigned to lookout duty? That is a very visual problem with this movie, which makes it a problem for the director. As for the technical bits, Brooks was uninspired. Aside from occasionally cutting to the ATM security feed, his style was boring and commonplace. He did make an odd editing choice during the opening credits to intersperse shots of the crime scene at the end of the film with the introductory scenes at the very beginning of the movie. It basically served the same purpose as having the survivor of a horror movie recount the events in a flashback, but without singling out any particular character as a survivor. It's not a terrible way to hint at the horror to come, but not give away the plot; of course, that horror movie trope is cheap and completely unnecessary to begin with, but at least he did a halfway decent job with it. One thing that you will notice about ATM is how boring it is to watch.
The action scenes suck, too. Just sitting through a fire? BO-ring.
That is only partly due to the subject matter. The rest if dull cinematography. How many times can you show the same camera shot? I understand that the story takes place in an enclosed space with a small cast, but you have to mix things up to keep the viewer interested! Buriedtakes place exclusively inside a coffin and used more interesting camera angles than ATM.
This shot is 80% of ATM's storyboards
As sub-par as the directing is, it is the writing that sinks ATM. Chris Sparling (who wrote Buried) received the writing credit for this movie, although I don't see anything to indicate whether he turned in a traditional script or if he handed in a stack of papers covered in crayon scribbles and boogers. This is easily the worst produced script I have seen in a good long while. Sucker Punch was better written than this movie, that's how dumb this script is. How is this script idiotic? Let's run down the list:
Three young professionals live in what appears to be the Wisconsin/Illinois area (judging by the killer's maps) in Winter, and yet none of them have a real Winter coat? Or gloves? And only the girl has a hat, and it's one of those fluffy ones that are more for looks than warmth? That's not how it works in the American Midwest. Nobody looks sexy outdoors in December in Chicago. Everyone bundles the hell up. Everyone. Even those assholes who wear shorts all year long will wear a puffy down jacket when it gets below zero.
Every other character in the movie is wearing the exact same Winter jacket with a fur trim on the hood. I live in Illinois, and I don't know a single man with fur trim on his jacket. I also rarely see people with their hoods up, unless it's sleeting. Hats, yes. Hoods, not so much. A string of men, all indistinguishable from each other because they all own the same damn coat and have their hoods up? That's about as likely as three people failing to have Winter jackets at the same time.
All three twentysomethings left their phones in the car (or let their battery die). All three? I am just outside the smartphone generation, and I rarely leave my phone in another room, let alone get out of the car without it. You're telling me that these three all did it at the same time?
Emily left her purse in the car (which was not her car, and was out in the open) when she got out to go to the ATM. I'm no expert on women, but I give that a zero percent chance of happening.
The killer shows up with no weapons. What the hell? His original plan was to look menacing, until someone gave him the means to find a weapon? Hell, he couldn't have done half of the things he did to the ATM vestibule without the tools he conveniently found in the trunk of David's car.
Who leaves a fire hose out overnight, let alone around Christmas?
David has a fully-stocked toolbox in his trunk. He trades securities or something like that. Why would he keep a few hundred dollars of non-tire-changing tools in his trunk?
There are several more examples, but those are the most mind-numbingly stupid instances of the writing in this movie. In the other cases, you can blame horror movie logic for their choices, but these are inexcusable.
"Now I have machine gun tire iron. Ho ho ho."
It is also worth pointing out that the movie portrays the killer as a mastermind that planned all this. Before the opening credits, we saw him writing on some schematics, planning his attack. But here's the thing: while the killer was "clever" enough to SPOILER ALERT: not get caught on camera, his foolproof plan apparently depended on having the stupidest three people alive do exactly the right things to allow this plan to work. Three people that decide not to overpower one person, even when they have proof that they could? Check. Three people with cell phones who all happen to leave their cell phones in the car? Double check. Three people who are made more desperate by the fact that they don't know what to wear when it is ridiculously cold out? Triple check. A group who parks their car just far enough away to have no chance of reaching it without the villain reaching them? Quadruple check.
Finally! Somebody parks their damn car close to the ATM machine. He's helping!
If you change any of those conditions, all of which are extremely unlikely, this dastardly plan falls apart. And if you think about any of those conditions, the movie falls apart. But let's not be completely negative. When David and Corey were having bro time, talking like normal guys, the dialogue was awkward and not terribly clever. So there's a silver lining.
As bad as ATM is, I couldn't help laughing at its ineptness. It takes itself so seriously that the obvious mistakes and plot holes feel utterly ridiculous. I can't imagine a modern movie with recognizable actors that is stupider than ATM. More pretentious? Sure. More frustrating? Easily. Simply worse? Yes. But dumber? The only thing that could be dumber than ATM would be a sequel. By the way, the ending clearly sets up a sequel. Since this movie made about forty-two cents against a budget of three million dollars, it probably won't happen, but how sweet would it have been for ATM 2: The ATMining to have had the same villain, with the same MO, against someone who wasn't fatally moronic?
Even better: same coat, but in Florida
The fact that ATM got made is an insult to any unpublished screenplays out there.
That doesn't mean it's not fun to watch, though. This movie has just enough stupidity to keep me interested in pointing out what the next mistake will be. It was close, though. There is a fine line between Lefty Gold and utter trash sometimes, I will admit. ATM straddles that line for much of the film. Thankfully, the fate of each character and the reveal of the killer as a "mastermind" was enough to make me belly laugh. I wouldn't advise watching this sober and/or alone, but in the right state of mind, it's pretty solid Lefty Gold.
