Box office: 79.9 million USD
Budget: 30 million USD
Producers: Gerard Butler, Tucker Tooley, Mark Canton, Alan Siegel
Banks
get robbed. It's a fact: Some 2,400 banks are hit each year in the
United States alone. Some robbers painstakingly plot their elaborate
heists. Others give little thought to their thieving strategy.
Merriman is definitely in the former category. He only ever approaches a job with complete planning and obsessive detail. He never wavers from the plan, and he constantly enforces that doctrine with his crew. He's a brooding former Marine who always seems right there on the razor's edge—always thinking, always focused, always explosively dangerous.
Merriman’s latest scheme is something so “special” that it involves several intricately linked smaller heists, crimes designed to distract anyone from noticing the big one that’s coming. No, Merrimen is definitely not your typical crook.
Big Nick, the guy in charge of L.A.'s major crimes division, is no typical cop, either. He's a boozy, chain-smoking, blustering blister of a man who always takes his team of bruiser cops to the rough-and-dirty edge of things. The law? That by-the-book stuff generally equals a whole lotta paperwork. And when you're struggling with a hangover, stomping your way through the underbelly of the city's strip joints and watching your personal life crumble, hey, paperwork is the last thing you want to hassle with.
Fact is, these two guys and their crews are completely different, but much the same. They know their stuff. They're big and hard-hitting. And they don't mind getting dirty when the need arises.
In the course of Merrimen's plans, for instance, a teammate screws up, a mistake that ends up killing four police officers, and wounding some half a dozen more.
Hey, sometimes it happens.
While digging into that deadly crime, Nick and his crew pick up one of Merrimen's underlings, get a little boozed up and then beat that low-level stooge 'til he's ready to give them something to work with.
Hey, sometimes it happens.
Merrimen and Nick, then, are two wizened, wily gunslingers, each playing his own perilous card game. And even if they don't know it now, both are running toward the same read-'em-and-weep ending: Somebody's gonna win the pot and somebody else is gonna be aces over eights.
Sometimes it … well, you know.
Merriman is definitely in the former category. He only ever approaches a job with complete planning and obsessive detail. He never wavers from the plan, and he constantly enforces that doctrine with his crew. He's a brooding former Marine who always seems right there on the razor's edge—always thinking, always focused, always explosively dangerous.
Merriman’s latest scheme is something so “special” that it involves several intricately linked smaller heists, crimes designed to distract anyone from noticing the big one that’s coming. No, Merrimen is definitely not your typical crook.
Big Nick, the guy in charge of L.A.'s major crimes division, is no typical cop, either. He's a boozy, chain-smoking, blustering blister of a man who always takes his team of bruiser cops to the rough-and-dirty edge of things. The law? That by-the-book stuff generally equals a whole lotta paperwork. And when you're struggling with a hangover, stomping your way through the underbelly of the city's strip joints and watching your personal life crumble, hey, paperwork is the last thing you want to hassle with.
Fact is, these two guys and their crews are completely different, but much the same. They know their stuff. They're big and hard-hitting. And they don't mind getting dirty when the need arises.
In the course of Merrimen's plans, for instance, a teammate screws up, a mistake that ends up killing four police officers, and wounding some half a dozen more.
Hey, sometimes it happens.
While digging into that deadly crime, Nick and his crew pick up one of Merrimen's underlings, get a little boozed up and then beat that low-level stooge 'til he's ready to give them something to work with.
Hey, sometimes it happens.
Merrimen and Nick, then, are two wizened, wily gunslingers, each playing his own perilous card game. And even if they don't know it now, both are running toward the same read-'em-and-weep ending: Somebody's gonna win the pot and somebody else is gonna be aces over eights.
Sometimes it … well, you know.
Positive Elements
We
see two different men, Nick and a thief named Levi, who both have
family lives outside their daily "jobs." These scenes could be viewed as
cautionary statements of sorts about how a hard life (especially when
it involves illegal or illicit activity) can take a severe toll on the
things we hold most dear. In Nick's case, we also see the painful effect
his rash choices have on his wife and innocent young daughters.
Spiritual Content
Though he’s definitely not
a spiritually focused man, Nick wears a cross throughout the movie. As a
guy bleeds to death from a neck wound, the cop who shot him says, "You
in His hands now."
Sexual Content
We
see several prostitutes in skimpy streetwear, women who’ve obviously
just been with Nick and his fellow officers. A scene showcases some
nearly naked strippers. The camera shows us another completely unclothed
women who apparently spent the night with Nick (who’s also shown
shirtless).
A man’s wife wears a very revealing dress. Merrimen crawls out of bed wearing just his underwear. Nick makes crude comments to a guy about his genitalia and the sexual assault he'll have to endure in prison.
A man’s wife wears a very revealing dress. Merrimen crawls out of bed wearing just his underwear. Nick makes crude comments to a guy about his genitalia and the sexual assault he'll have to endure in prison.
No comments:
Post a Comment