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Reviews
The Dirt (2019)
Exceeds Expectations
I went into this with extremely low expectations and was more than pleasantly surprised. The casting is near perfect. Machine Gun Kelly knocked it out of the park as Tommy Lee. Being a huge Crue fan in the 80's none of the material in this film is new to me and yes I was very aware of inconsistencies that were presumably done for theatrical and story telling purposes. None of that bothers me. To me, this is the right kind of awesomely cheesy. I'm impressed with the actors in this film. They inhabited the personas of Vince, Mick, Nikki, and Tommy really well. And I think that was the idea. Lastly, I've always resonated most with Nikki and seeing his childhood trauma depicted on the big screen was deeply moving. It's truly a miracle that guy is alive and well.
Triple Frontier (2019)
Missed Opportunity
Like so many other reviewers have written, I was really looking forward to this film but was deeply disappointed. The cast was stellar, no question about it. And their chemistry was terrific as well. The cinematography was beautiful. I even liked the cliched use of vintage, fist pumping metal anthems. What I could not abide was the sub par script and lack of character development. When Hunnam's character is describing choking out a stranger in a grocery store, a visual flashback would have helped us understand the depths of what he's casually talking about in that scene. When Afleck references the many ways and times he's let his estranged wife down, again a flashback would help us feel something for him. Their is no discernible soul searching before they quickly decide to embark on this heist. Much has already been stated about the holes and ridiculous mistakes these guys make. I was cringing when no one was standing watch as they pulled money from the walls. And then Affleck's character goes rogue without any set up to suggest we might expect that from him. I didn't buy it. If the filmmakers wanted us to believe that, they should have used flashbacks to show us something similar in him or the opposite: show us how tight and predictable these guys' movements were in the field previously. When Hedlund's character is hooting and hollering and talking about buying a Lamborghini I thought, "These guys deserve to get caught". I tapped out when the mule fell to its death. After that, I fast forwarded through it stopping intermittently to see if the film had managed to redeem itself at all. Sadly it did not. What a massive waste of talent, budget, and interesting story premise.