Welcome To DirkFlix!

UPDATED 4/1/2025: Completely revised the When To See scale to reflect the extinction of rental stores and 2nd run dollar show theaters in today's streaming world. The original version of this can be visited here.
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Oh, fercryingoutloud! ANOTHER movie review blog?!? Another guy who thinks his opinion matters and wishes to inflict it on the overloaded Information Superhighway? (What ever happened to that buzzword? Haven't heard it in ages.) Why should we care?

A: Yes, yes, and why not?

The purpose of this blog when started after seeing Avatar in 2009 was to allow me to get back into the habit of reviewing movies and DVDs like I used to between 2004-2008 for IGN and The Digital Bits before life stuff and editorial differences ended those associations.

 Initially intended to not be 1000-2000 word chin-stroking epics, but mostly a few paragraphs about what I've been watching and whether they might be of interest to you, I unfortunately got slack about actually writing anything. While I logged and scored everything I've seen, I didn't write reviews in a timely manner and after a while and a dozen intervening movies, I couldn't remember enough specifics to properly review them, so they remained unpublished.

Since fixing hundreds of unwritten reviews is impossible, I've dedicated myself to knuckling down this year (2025), and as of this revised update only a few reviews need to be finished off out of over 40 this year. I may also go back and start publishing older reviews, even if they're just scores; perhaps adding a sentence or two. Use the hashtag options and search box to see if I saw something in particular.

With movies even more outrageously expensive and even an all-you-can eat service like Netflix and Amazon Prime can still cost you time (which is worth more than money because you can't make more of it), I give movies a numerical score (wow! original!) and how urgently it is for you to see it. Since the Hot Fad Plague of 2020-2022 completely upended going to the movies and everyone and their dog started subscription streaming services (as well as good old cable for Boomers), I have radically revised the When To See scale from six to basically three points:

 1. Pay full/matinee price to see it at a theater. Pretty self-explanatory. The rare times I now go see a movie theatrically, I'll rate whether it's worth going to the show and how much you should pay.

2. Catch it on cable/streaming. This is the most common recommendation now because I see the overwhelming majority of movies at home, but also not every movie needs the theatrical experience. Whether you choose to wait for it to come to your streamer/cable channel of choice, rent or buy it digitally, or hoist the black flag to obtain it, is up to your budget and/or morals. Movies with this ranking are worth your time.

3. Skip it. Even for free, life's too short to waste on bad movies.

For Blu-ray/DVD reviews, I'll recommend whether they're worth buying since there's no rental options anymore now that Redbox has joined Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Family Video in oblivion. The quantity and quality of extras or the audio-visual quality factor heavily here.

As always, these reviews are just one lifelong movie fans opinions, except that unlike other critics & fans, mine is the only opinion that matters and all reviews are 100% correct in their judgements. If you disagree, that's fine, but understand that you are incorrect in your opinion. ;-)

 Enough of my yakking, let's review some movies!

"Havoc" 4K Review

 I'm embarrassed to say that I've not yet seen either The Raid: Redemption nor The Raid 2, Gareth Edwards seminal action cult classics despite having bought both on Blu-ray on Jan. 29, 2017, 8-1/4 years ago. (Hey, I've been busy!) So it was with great interest that I looked forward to this Netflix original written and directed by Evans so I could see what the hype was about. Sadly, I'm still waiting.

Havoc opens with a wild, obviously mostly CGI chase sequence where the police are chasing a semi truck, culminating in the two who were in the trailer heaving a washing machine out the back where it smashes through the windshield of a cop car, gravely injuring the driver. Later, the quartet deliver the cocaine to a Triad boss, but while the two wait in the car, the other two - Charlie (Justin Cornwel) and Mia (Quelin Sepulveda) - are inside when a trio of masked men armed with machine guns arrive and kill everyone, while the pair barely escape.

Homicide detective Patrick Walker (Tom Hardy) and his uniform partner, Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), investigate and security camera footage show Charlie and Mia's escape which could be inconvenient because Charlies father is Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), a real estate developer who is running for mayor of this unnamed fictitious city. Walker is on Beaumont's payroll, so he's tasked with finding Charlie and protecting him from the law and the Triad gangs and Walker's fellow dirty cops led by Vincent (Timothy Olyphant).

I'm not even going to try and continue recapping the plot because even with the Wikipedia synopsis to refer back to it's so convoluted and confused, I'm still unclear of half of what happened other than everyone seems corrupt, everyone is screwing over everyone else, and pretty much everyone gets dead by the end. Evans' script feels like it was written by someone who overheard people talking about various action/crime/gangster movies and then tried to cobble those impressions into a new plot with "Pew pew pew pew!!!" as half of the words. It's confusing and the subplot about Walker's daughter is trite and tropey. Also, if a rich, powerful businessman running for office were to be kidnapped as depicted, someone would notice.

I hate to have to keep carping on this in so many action movie reviews, but John Wick changed the game in 2014 and shakycam/edit fu action filmmaking isn't acceptable anymore. When The Raid: Redemption came out in 2012, it was a high water mark for that style of filmmaking, but now it seems contrived. While there are some kicky moments and "Oooooooh!" kills, there are also people firing so many rounds without reloading or having so much lead hurled at them the fact that they're not turned into pencils much less not dead that it becomes distractingly cartoonish. I'm not asking for total realism; John Wick's entire skeleton should be crumbs most of the time, but when people are being either shot 20 times or not hit at all after hundreds of rounds incoming, it's silly.

Hardy's performance is ehn, probably because I'm concurrently watching the Paramount+ series Mobland in which he plays a very similar character - a compromised fixer who fixes things with violence. The rest of the characters are such cartoons that you can't grade for the performances, though Li as the seemingly only honest cop in the city is appealing in a movie filled with characters there's little point in caring about.

The production design is interesting in that this nameless city seems to be mashed up from areas ranging from New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Hong Kong, etc. which makes the fact it was shot in Wales (with heavy VFX enhancement) more surprising. (However, I was shocked to see one shot definitely filmed in Detroit proper though I could find nothing anywhere about it.)

For those paying Netflix's top price, the Dolby Vision presentation has some moments where neon lights pop brightly, but it's mostly grimy, gritty darkness. The Atmos audio is enveloping, but not particularly distinctive.

While a misfire, Havoc does make me want to fnailly watch the Raid movies. Maybe within the next eight years.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.

"A Working Man" Review

 Just a year after the sleeper hit of The Beekeeper, director David Ayer and star Jason Statham are back with A Working Man, based on Levon's Trade, one of a series of novels by comic book writer Chuck Dixon. While The Beekeeper was a bonkers mess while being entertaining, this time we're given a bog-standard revenge flick which while it knocked off Disney's disastrous Sand Brown Snow White in the box office in its second week, it won't be remembered in Statham's Pantheon of action classics.

 Statham plays Levon Cade, a grumpy ex-Royal Marines commando working as a construction foreman for Joe Garcia (Michael Peña) in Chicago. He has a young daughter, Merry (Isla Gie), who lives with her grandfather, Dr. Jordan Roth (Richard Heap), who blames Levon for his daughter unaliving herself after a lifelong battle with depression. He is seeking to further restrict Levon's limited visitation time because he has PTSD & is a violent killer, though that's what soldiers do in war.

During an evening of clubbing with friends, Joe's daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped. Joe begs Levon to help, offering $70,000, but Levon demurs saying he's not that person anymore. But after about five minutes and a visit to a blind war buddy, Gunny (David Harbour), he changes his mind and embarks on the quest to find Jenny, working his way through Russian mobsters and various underworld lowlifes.

If you've seen any Unstoppable Killing Machine On A Revenge Mission movies, you can pretty much guess how A Working Man goes on its discount Taken plotline. The problem is that the script by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone (whose producer credit indicates he was developing this for himself) is in need of heavy editing and streamlining to pick up the pace. We are separated from Jenny for so long at times we almost forget what Levon is after.

The way he tries to pick up the trail by dealing with biker meth dealers slows the pace. He calls another war buddy who works at the DEA for some info and we never hear from him again. An opening scene where armed thugs rough up a worker at the construction site and Levon steps in to deal the hurt has zero ramifications. And the ending seems like it wants to set up a sequel of some sorts when there's little left to this story. Even the introduction of the grandfather dressed like a Jamiroquai cosplayer isn't explained and how that allows him to look down on Levon.

Statham is Statham in pretty much every Statham movie - grumpy bald Brit with hints of a soft center under his iron fists. At 57, he's beginning to slow down - he was 34 when he shot The Transporter and his peak heyday was in the Aughts. It doesn't help that Ayer covers the action with too close framing and reliance on shakycam. After John Wick revolutionized action coverage, there's no excuse for poor fight work.

 To be punny, A Working Man is a workmanlike movie. Not bad, but not as good as it could've been with substantial tightening and a sharper focus. With a dozen novels so far in the Levon Cade series, they'd clearly like to make a franchise of this, but they'll have to get better quickly to succeed.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.

"Novocaine" Review

People complain that there aren't any original movies which aren't sequels or based on IPs, but when different, original movies do come out, they don't go see them. I suspect it's because the expense of going to the movies makes taking risks on new ideas, well, risky, but if Hollyweird doesn't see a return on the investments, can you blame them for just churning out more sequels and IP-based flicks?

One victim of this conundrum is Jack Quaid, nepo baby (parents are Dennis Quaid & Meg Ryan) star of The Boys who somehow managed to dodge both parents aesthetic genetics. (Someone has to be a Gene Hackman type. RIP) Earlier this year his sexbot-gone-murderbot movie Companion (7/10) opened to good reviews and poor box office and now we have Novocaine, a kicky high-concept action dramedy which also disappointed commercially and was on streaming in a few weeks.

Quaid is Nathan "Novocaine" Caine, a timid San Diego assistant bank manager with a congenital condition which makes him incapable of feeling pain or temperature which we're given hints by a stop on his shower valve to prevent it getting too hot and burning him, tennis balls on the corners of desks and counters, and drinking coffee from a mug filled with ice. He doesn't even eat solid food because he's afraid of biting his tongue off. He stays home playing videogames with his only "friend", Roscoe (Jacob Batalon, Ned from the MCU Spider-Man movies), whom he's never even met in real life.

A cute teller at his bank, Sherry (Amber Midthunder, Prey), hits on him, inviting him to lunch and then to an art show and due to the power of boners, he's willing to risk going out. They connect over the course of the evening, ending up getting quite cozy after she introduces him to the joy of pie. Cherry pie. (As in the baked dessert, you pervs.) They also run into an old school bully who had called him Novocaine back in the day, leading to the worst round of shots ever for one of them.

 The next morning is Christmas Eve and things take a turn when Nathan's bank is robbed by three men dressed as Santa lead by Simon (Ray Nicholson, Jack's nepo baby who makes Christian Slater's Jack act look respectable). After the manager is killed for refusing to open the vault, they threaten to kill Sherry and to save her Simon opens the vault. The cops show up and they take her hostage as they exit the bank, leading to a big gunfight and casualties among the cops. After using his belt to tourniquet one cop's wounds, he takes his gun and cop car and chases after the robbers.

As Nathan attempts to find Sherry, two police detectives -  Langston (Betty Gabriel, Get Out) and Duffy ( Matt Walsh, Veep) - believe he was an inside man because he opened the vault and stole a police car to follow them, but Langston isn't so sure because she spots Nathan's belt which he used as a tourniquet to save the cop whose car he borroowed's life. If a guy with no record, not even a traffic ticket, is a bank robber, why would he stop to help a cop?

As Nathan continues his quest, he begins to take more and more damage. While he doesn't feel pain, he's not Deadpool or Wolverine with the ability to instantly heal. Getting beaten up, slammed into walls, tortured, shoot by an arrow and/or grabbing a gun out of a deep fryer takes its toll and the damage gets pretty graphic, though it's played for laughs most of the time a la Evil Dead 2.

The script by Lars Jacobson actually takes the time to set up the characters and the underlying theme of people not being who they appear or claim to be which leads to a couple of twists, only one of which I saw coming. The time spent setting up Nathan and Sherry's damaged backstories adds more depth than the premise would usually consider necessary. Directorial team Dan Berk and Robert Olsen manage the action well, mostly staying on the humorous side of the giggly/grisly line, but towards the end things begin to drag out and veer into cruelty. And the ultimate resolution seems a tad pat, but doesn't sink it at the finish line.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. 

"Black Bag" Review

 If you watch the trailer for Black Bag below, it implies that it is a taut spy thriller about married spooks Mr. & Mrs. Smith George (Michael Fassbender, Prometheus) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett, Tar) from the director of Traffic, Steven Soderbergh, and the writer of Jurassic Park, David Koepp. There's a traitor and it may be George's wife. Dun-dun-DUHN!! Sadly, it's a sluggish, talky, drawn-out slog where you the struggle to stay awake for the sparse moments of interests within.

Opening with British SIS (formerly MI-6) agent George meeting a contact at a London club. He's given a list of five names, including his wife's, and the warning that if something called Severus is used, thousands of people could die. He has a week to find out who the bad guy is.

To this end he invites the other names on the list, all co-workers, to his and Kathryn's swanky townhouse for dinner and I'm just going to copypasta the synopsis from Wikipedia here to save time:

[S]atellite imagery specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela, Industry), her boyfriend and managing agent Freddie (Tom Burke, Furiosa), agency psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris, Skyfall), and her boyfriend and managing agent James (Regé-Jean Page, Bridgerton). At dinner, George drugs their food to lower their inhibitions. In an effort to learn more about the guests, George engages them in a psychological game. Amongst other things, it is revealed that Freddie has been cheating on Clarissa; in response to which Clarissa angrily stabs Freddie in the hand with a steak knife.

But a lot of convenient clues are pointing at Kathryn from ticket stubs in the trash to a movie she claims to have not seen to a cover identity she'd used tied to millions of dollars deposited in a Swiss bank account. While attempting to see why she was in Zurich, George has Clarissa redirect a spy satellite off the books for a few minutes at which point a suspected Russian agent in possession of Severus is able to escape.

Enraged, their boss Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan, Mrs. Doubtfire) orders George, Freddie and James to find the traitor. George is sweating because he's been acting in a way which looks like he's letting his marriage interfere with national, if not global, security. Of course, there's a lot of red herrings and twists and turns are reveals because spy movie. 

But it's handled so quietly that it's easy to doze off like the missus did. In discussing why everyone seems to fraternize at work, one talks about how operational secrecy precludes discussing one's work with civilians, but it's hard to trust your romantic partners because even with everyone being a spy, you still can't talk about what your specific missions are and the catch-all term "black bag" (roll credits!) can be used to protect state secrets or your nooners at hotel with someone else from the office you're shagging.

As for George and Kathryn, they seem to be the perfect couple, but he clearly states that he can't stand liars, but something is clearly up with her. Can she be trusted or is she using his love and trust to do dastardly deeds?

The performances are fine and when Koepp actually writes something interesting Soderbergh stages the scenes well enough (he also does his own cinematography and editing under pseudonyms), but even at 94 minutes it feels padded and slow. He and Koepp have done several movies together lately, all in the 90-minute range in defiance of the length-over-depth ethos weighing Hollyweird down with 3-1/2 hour marathons like The Brutalist and Killers of the Flower Moon, but their Max original Kimi was much better (score: 7.5/10, no written review) even with a much less pedigreed cast.

Black Bag narrowly avoids falling into the 4/10 Skip It range by virtue of Fassbender's performance and the occasional sparks of interest, but this isn't the heartiest recommendation.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.