H (2002)

There’s a new copycat killer in town. Meow! So instead of assigning a team of professional homicide detectives to the case, the local police put together a team of highly emotional chain smokers. At the same time, the original murderer sits on death row acting like a smug douche.

I’m always interested in finding new films and artistic visions, but honestly, I would have probably been better off watching two old episodes of Dexter than wasting my time on H. Although I did get a chuckle out of the one cop who encounters two other cars on the road so he drives his whip straight into a pole. That was funny. As far as serious entertainment goes, H is a total bust. The entire story is lifted from numerous other serial killer cop thrillers and the big payoff at the end is dumb as hell.

Okay acting, shit script, meddling pace, damn near worthless detective investigation, lots of smoking, emotional outbursts left and right, zero thrillers, a little bit of blood, zero time travel, zero likable characters, zero cheerleaders, one detective who falls down at least three different times. I somehow managed to stay awake for the entire film, but afterward I wished I had taken a nap instead.

Skip it with a vengeance.

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Oh shit. I was going through my stuff after I wrote the review above and discovered I reviewed this movie elsewhere back in 2005. Here is the full review, totally unedited. (I did add in the links to older reviews.) It's okay:

Along came a stinker.

Anybody who falls for the cover blurb "SEVEN meets SILENCE OF THE LAMBS" is gonna be disappointed...kinda like me.

Nicely filmed and that's about it H is the clunky, unexciting tale of a copycat serial killer who's reenacting the grisly murders of another killer who was arrested 10 months earlier. Very interesting idea.

Now enter the world's most inept cops. First you got Kang who in every single scene freaks out in some way and either kicks something, breathes heavy, screams, wrecks his car or all of the above. His partner, Kim, has a haircut like Mia Farrow in ROSEMARY'S BABY and the personality of the wooden Indian in CREEPSHOW 2. She also likes to disrupt crime scenes, stare blankly and punch or shoot Kang.

I wanted to like the film. I was all excited and happy for about the first minute and forty seconds then Kang showed up and it all went downhill from there. On the bright side I did learn that if I ever want to head up a surprise raid on a serial killer's house to NOT land a helicopter in his front yard first.

OCEAN'S ELEVEN (2001)

A professional criminal, Danny Ocean (George Clooney), comes up with an idea to simultaneously rob three large casinos in Las Vegas of around 150 million dollars in cold hard cash money duckets cheddar. Naturally, in order to do this, he will need ten of his trendiest and dorkiest friends. You got the one guy with the computers and the other guy who’s good at the thing and the one guy with perhaps the most distractingly bad British accent in movie history. You catch what me drippin', guvna? Oh yeah, the casinos are all owned by the guy (Andy Garcia) who is now long-dicking Ocean’s ex-wife, Julia Roberts. Imagine that.

Every time I sit down to watch OCEAN’S ELEVEN I end up watching part 2 and 3 also. I think my handsome brain just sees all three of them as one singular six-hour movie. The entire series really is super enjoyable junk food for the brain. Solid acting by the entire cast, a goofy story that’s about as believable as the Book of Genesis, not as many location shots of Las Vegas as I wanted, zero nudity, zero cheerleaders, two bumbling Oceaners who bicker back and forth so much that you wanna bash their skulls together like in HELLRAISER: BLOODLINES, a two-hour runtime that flies by and leaves you wanting more, lots of goofy dialogue that super fun to laugh at, confident direction.

As far as dude-centric, early 2000's American heist films go, OCEAN'S ELEVEN is one of the better ones. It's a good comfort movie to have playing in the background. I wish the people behind the movie would edit together a six-hour supercut of all three films. That way when you're playing it you don't have to flip over to the next film.

Original - Ocean's 11 (1960)
Part 2 - Ocean's Twelve (2004)
Part 3 - Ocean's Thirteen (2007)
Spin-off - Ocean's Eight (2018)

GONE IN 60 SECONDS (2000)

Steal 50 cars in 72 hours. That’s the gist of the entire story.

Nicolas Cage is the greatest car thief in the known universe. But he’s retired. So, in order to pull off a needlessly overly complicated job in an unnecessarily short amount of time, gangster Christopher Eccleston threatens to force Cage’s lil’ brother, Giovanni Ribisi, to watch a Will Smith movie…or was it kill him? Hum, I can’t remember. Either way it’s a horrible punishment and Cage understands the seriousness of the situation. So, he assembles a 2 kool 4 skool group of forgettable dorks (and Robert Duvall) to help him steal 50 high-end whips in 72 hours. At the same time, there are two police detectives (Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant) following leads and eventually discovering the invention of the blacklight.

GONE IN 60 SECONDS is an interesting callback to the dark days before the Fast & Furious movies and it helps me appreciate the series even more than I already do. On paper, 60 Seconds has the ingredients for an awesome cheesy guilty pleasure fast car movie, but, sadly, it’s unable to turn those ingredients into an awesome movie. Instead, it’s just kinda…meh. There are no standout moments, the characters are all one-dimensional, the car chases are boring, almost zero regard by any of the characters concerning the immediate danger they’re in, the dialog is forgettable bland chatter, most of the acting is on cruise control and the entire look of the film is just off. Like why are all the daytime scenes so brown?

I've seen GONE IN 60 SECONDS a few times over the years and every single time I go into it hoping that it's gonna be awesome and that maybe last time I saw it I was wrong, but then I watch it and end up thinking "This is it?" It's disappointing because, beforehand, in my handsome brain I see this insanely awesome story full of colourful characters and badass action, but then the reality is a simplistic, by-the-numbers car chase movie...with boring car chases. Overall, it's a watchable film, but it misses that spark that would make it dope. Also, I could never get over the fact that our heroes are literally car thieves! So, like no matter what their reasonings are…they’re still causing innocent people massive hardships due to their property being stolen. And we're suppose to be rooting for these people? Fuck them. And don’t even get me started on the innocent people injured from all of the car wrecks.

Also, for no reason in particular, I wanna give a quick shoutout to whoever did the casting for THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS. You deserve a Gallo 12 and a Gallo 24.

Original - Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)