Tag: Joseph Gilgun

I tried to go into The Infiltrator blind, like a perfect critic, but I ended up reading the IMDB page for both a brief plot analysis and actors. I’m sorry, I failed, I’m not perfect.

The film is directed by Brad Furman, who did Runner Runner and The Lincoln Lawyer, both vary different films in terms of quality and subject matter. Given the cast involved, I certainly hope this is more of a Lincoln Lawyer than a Runner Runner.

Shit, why is this movie not an alliterative title? He could have a thing going. I, Infiltrator would work. Or Informative Infiltrator, that would be fun. But we couldn’t do Informant + Infiltrator, that is too close to just The Informant.

Just looking at the image makes me feel 10 monies more worth.

Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston), totally a real dude, was a U.S. customs agent who worked in Tampa, Florida in the 1980s. He was one of those guys trying to get Pablo Escobar, to stop so much cocaine from getting in to the US, because Reagan said so. He is getting old and could retire, but he finally has a good idea to “Get these guys!” for good. Despite what his wife (Juliet Aubrey) wants.

He is going to follow the money. Which sure, seems obvious now, but apparently his idea was cutting edge. He got approval from the boss (Amy Ryan) and has to team up with Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo), a kind of crummy agent but who currently has an undercover role in the organization to get him in.

Robert just has to pretend to be a money launderer. Once he gets in the ground level of the business, like with the Gonzalos (Rubén Ochandiano, Simón Andreu), he can then get to Javier Ospina (Yul Vazquez), then a big name like Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt) and his wife (Elena Anaya)! Speaking of wives, Robert said he only had a fiance, so they had to bring in an agent (Diane Kruger) to pretend to be that as well in order to keep his story straight.

Another agent is played by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, some corrupt bankers by Art Malik, Saïd Taghmaoui, and Tim Dutton. Olympia Dukakis is his aunt, Joseph Gilgun his actual bad guy body guard, and Michael Paré with a smaller role.

I was just wondering why that “guy from Miss Congeniality” didn’t have a bigger career. Now look at him, drug lord!

Halfway through the movie I still wasn’t sure what I thought about it. My mind was going everywhere. The acting was good from Cranston, Leguizamo, Bratt, and Kruger, yes. But the story felt like it was full of annoying cliches that kept getting on my nerves.

Of course, given that this is a “True Story” I don’t know how many of the cliches ended up being real or not. But one that really bugs me is that since The Sopranos, it seems that every drama story needs to have extreme marital tension or drama, potentially up to divorce. From the text at the end of the movie, it looked like all of that was completely added in for shitty tension and it gets old.

We had silly lines like the wife needing a promise that this would be the last mission (of course, because he is old and we need the movie) and Cranston becoming someone completely different (despite going undercover a lot). There was a terrible scene involving a wedding cake that just was cringe inducing and took me out of the film, it just seemed so silly to drive a simple point home.

Dumb cliches and scenes aside, the ending really drove this movie home into something better. The event where they were able to get a lot of the criminals under one roof was very emotional. They turned these “bad guys” into real people, with families, reason for working with drugs and more. And they all got busted equally. It didn’t drive home the point enough that the War on Drugs in itself is a complete failure, but it makes sense that Robert Mazur wouldn’t mention that in a book where he is the hero.

Pretty good acting and a strong ending. Maybe the film is a bit too long with some cringey moments, but overall it was really enjoyable and a good couple of hours.

I think there is a lot of negative stigma in this country towards prisoners. I mean, if they go to prison, they deserve to be there, is the general rule of thumb. Which is why no one cares about prison rape/violence, and it has become jokes on themselves. But sometimes you get other points of view, like Oz, which dehumanize these practices and make them not a laughing matter.

And it can go completely the other way too. You sometimes get a movie where you are escaping from a future space prison, which has a zero violence record, like Lockout.

Oh shit. That space prisoner has a space gun! Quick, call the space police!

Pretty simple story. This is the FUTURE! CIA Agent Snow (Guy Pearce) has been arrested! He apparently murdered another agent who was undercover, who had evidence of a different agent selling secrets about the space program. Well, that makes it look like Snow is guilty. Snow is threatened to be sent to the space prison by Scott Langral (Peter Stormare) head of the secret service. So that happens, while Snow has one of his agent buddies Harry Shaw (Lennie James) go searching for the dead agent’s briefcase that may show him as innocent.

Speaking of the space prison, you are probably wondering how there is no crime or anything. Well, they kind of put them into sleep up there, and get woken up when they are done with the sentence very nice. But reports are that being in stasis might make them crazy, or get dementia. That sucks. Clearly the president’s daughter, Emilie (Maggie Grace), is the best person to send up there to investigate these claims. She wakes up and interviews a prisoner, Hydell (Joseph Gilgun), who as luck would have it is actually crazy! He escapes and releases all the other prisoners, and they also gain the president’s daughter and security team as hostages.

Hydell’s brother Alex (Vincent Regan) ends up taking charge, because he isn’t completely bat shit insane and realizes killing hostages is stupid.

Either way, rescue attempt, escape attempts, maybe everyone is actually a bad guy on this prison, not just the prisoners. Normal stuff to wonder about in a space action movie.

Always time for a smoke break when you are silencing an entire prison.

It really does take a lot more than just basic action to please me. By now, long time readers would realize that. I like action movies if they also have a nice plot or wonderful acting to it. But that is not how most action movies are made. And thus, they are dreadfully skewed on the scale at gorgonreviews.com. But hey, that is why they are my opinion.

I actually thought Guy Pearce did a nice job as a leading action star dude, but everyone else was a let down. And you know, shitty plot, some bad special effects that they didn’t work too hard on, and a pretty predictable-ish plot.

But fuck it, space prison, amirite?