Thunderbolts (2025)
I will tell you right now, dear reader, that I’m never going to include the asterisk when I type the title of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) newest epic entry, Thunderbolts. The reveal one week into its theatrical release that the team was rebranded “The New Avengers” seemed at best like a peculiar marketing gimmick to try and boost ticket sales after its opening weekend. “Oh, there’s an ‘Avengers’ in this movie title? Well I’ll go see that now,” said likely nobody ever. It just felt like a marketing ploy and the presence of the asterisk in the title, meant to symbolize and facilitate that identity transition, is just a symbol of trying to be too cute by half. Just be the Thunderbolts. Accept yourself as the Thunderbolts. Isn’t that part of the lesson of the movie, finding acceptance despite your misgivings and doubts? Refreshingly, while there are the occasional action sequence and general fisticuffs, Thunderbolts proves to be a much more probing and psychological MCU entry and entertaining beyond just the escapism.
Yelena (Florence Pugh) feels adrift as a secret black ops agent doing the government’s dirty work. Her handler, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), has promised to let her retire after one last job. It just so happens that job is a scheme to have all of Valentina’s black ops killers to take each other out to spare her any embarrassing details coming out while she’s under Congressional investigation. That includes John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a disgraced Captain America place-holder, and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), the villain of Ant-Man and the Wasp who could phase through matter, and some mysterious man named Bob (Phillip Pullman) who suffers from amnesia and seems out of place. Along the way they’ll pick up other characters, like Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who is serving as a freshman Congressman, and Alexei a.k.a the Red Guardian (David Harbour), Yelena’s adopted father who is eager to support his daughter and bridge a divide that has grown between them recently. The constantly bickering group of malcontents, antiheroes, and misanthropes band together to survive as well as figure out Bob’s importance for a person as dangerous and manipulative as Valentina.
Thunderbolts is about a group of screw-ups who know they’re screw-ups, who know the world sees them as screw-ups, trying to be something more, and it doesn’t take much to see larger themes surrounding depression, loneliness, and community. There’s long been a pleasure in watching oddballs, let alone an unorthodox team of them, find solace and camaraderie they have been missing. It’s satisfying under most circumstances. It also helps when we are given the understanding of why these characters feel so alone and so useless. I’ll freely admit, in the first months of 2025 with the current government doing everything in its power to make people feel scared and alone and useless, I connected with the themes and eventual uplift of Thunderbolts perhaps at a level I might not have had the movie been released in 2023 or, say, under a President Harris. Regardless, I found this movie engaging because it focused less on the literal and metaphorical strengths of its characters and more on their weaknesses and fragility and needs. There is no giant sky beam, nor any faceless easily disposable swarm of CGI robots or aliens, nor any real world-ending apocalypse they have to thwart in that final climax. It really all comes down to combating an epidemic of loneliness, and the only way to do so is to willingly open one’s self to the possibility of pain, of disappointment, of embarrassment, or rejection, and to do so anyway because the alternative is just too grim and self-defeating an option. It forces characters with very real pain and regrets to confront that pain and to still keep trying. The scary enemy is not resolved through a punch but through a genuine hug. You can’t punch out depression. For me, that’s far more engaging and emotionally resonant for the thirty-sixth movie in the MCU than just more punching and explosions amidst a CGI-laden morass.
This is proof that Florence Pugh (Dune: Part Two, Oppenheimer) can power anything with her acting chops and charisma. Her character was a breakout scene-stealer in 2021’s Black Widow, and I’ve been glad every time since she’s popped onscreen. I find Pugh to be such a compelling actor, but she’s driven by movies that tend to put her through an emotional wringer so much I’m worried her face will permanently lock into a sob. She’s great, but it’s also just nice to watch her cut loose and have fun playing a character too. Even though Yelena has a darkness to her, and I would argue qualifies as depressed, this is still a role that allows Pugh to play with lighter elements, giving her a sardonic bounce that makes her even more appealing. This is a character worthy of headlining the team, and Pugh shines once again given an even bigger Marvel spotlight. I also want to sing the praises of Dreyfus (HBO’s Veep) and Harbour (Stranger Things) as near-perfect encapsulations of their respective characters. She’s all blistering cynicism and he’s a blustery teddy bear.
Another refreshing aspect for Thunderbolts is how it feels like a real movie. Obviously the other 35 MCU entries are movies by definition, but here is a movie that feels more authentic. It looks and sounds better in presentation. You can tell there are real locations. The cinematography is by Andrew Doz Polermo, the same man who photographed The Green Knight. The musical score is by Son Lux, the same composer responsible for the eclectic and sensational music for Everything Everywhere All at Once. The co-writers are from Netflix’s acclaimed miniseries Beef, as is the director, Jake Schreier, whose first film was the 2012 amiable indie dramedy Robot & Frank. There is a genuine effort to do something a little different from the factory setting of modern Marvel movies. It was just nice to actually take in real surroundings, real terrain, natural light, and composed by such a skillful director of photography. The technical elements are blockbuster level but also infused with a little indie sensibilities, bringing a different visual flavor to this studio tentpole. It might sound like a backhanded compliment (“Oh, a movie that is, gasp, made outside a giant green screen warehouse or LED screen”) but I am genuinely grateful. This is a Marvel movie whose Act Three chase takes more notes from Being John Malkovich and its jaunt through repressed memories than any standard superhero action climax. After so many MCU entries, you celebrate the ones that not only try something different but succeed, especially after the impulse to be more of the same is so strong.
That’s not to say that there still isn’t more that could have been done to better shape and develop Thunderbolts. Ultimately it feels like a more solid idea with some good characters and themes than a fully realized screenplay making the best use of its two hours. The movie isn’t quite the ensemble it may appear from the outside. One of the characters is removed so unceremoniously early that I question why this character was even brought back, especially since nobody would qualify this specific character as a favorite. I suppose it’s to present the appearance of elevated stakes, but it just reminds me of the 2016 Suicide Squad that introduced Adam Beach (Windtalkers) as Slipknot, the man “who could climb anything,” who just gets his head blown off so casually before their first mission even begins. However, with Thunderbolts, the movie really has a top tier of characters, primarily Yelena and John Walker and Bob. There’s another lower tier of characters that kind of come and go and provide moments, either levity or convenience, like Ghost and Red Guardian. Then there’s another lower tier of characters with even less time who pop in to scramble things or remind everyone of the exposition or stakes, like Bucky and Valentina. It doesn’t feel as fully integrated as an ensemble as the best Marvel team movies, like James Gunn’s Guardians films, so it can be a little frustrating when we’re celebrating the value of a community but not everyone is pulling their own narrative weight. I’m sure I could fall in love with Ghost as a character, but when she just poofs in and out and her whole arc is, “Hey, she came back,” that’s not going to do it. I also find the whole superhero science experiment a little late in the MCU to be introduced. We have characters talking about being in grade school when the Battle for New York, the centerpiece fight of 2012’s Avengers, took place, like Millennials today speak about where they were on 9/11, so it seems very late for the government to be trying to produce their own superheroes they can control. Weren’t they already making superheroes in the 1940s anyway with the likes of Captain America? This is old hat.
The MCU has been in a bit of a slump since the conclusion of Endgame, though I would also maintain the “death of the MCU/superhero fatigue” storyline has been over-dramatized and beaten to death. Thunderbolts has some very appealing and refreshing elements, focusing more on its characters and their faults so that their eventual triumphs will feel even more emotionally resonant. It’s nice for the action to support the characters and their drama rather than the other way around, and especially refreshing for the climax to be one about acceptance and vulnerability rather than over-powering some physical menace. I liked the Thunderbolts characters and their combustible energy and banter and would have liked them even more if more of them felt more fully integrated into the movie and given richer arcs. Still, it’s hard to reinvent any franchise thirty-six movies deep, and Thunderbolts, or The New Avengers depending upon what Disney decides to do with its titling from here out ( a real Live, Die, Repeat situation), takes what works with quirky oddball team-ups and makes it work with refreshing artistic sensibility. It won’t be for everyone but it’s got enough going for it that, damn, these crazy kids might just make something of it.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Layer Cake (2005) [Review Re-View]
Originally released June 10, 2005:
Layer Cake may be the least intimidating name ever for a crime movie. It conjures images of bridal showers, cooking shows, and birthday parties. It does not necessarily bring to mind thoughts of gangsters, assassins, drug trafficking, and the seamy underbelly of London’s criminal underground. Unless you’re watching some really awesome cooking show I don’t know about. The “layer cake” in question refers to the hierarchy of criminals. This isn’t unfamiliar territory for Matthew Vaughn, who produced Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. This time it’s Vaughn sitting in the director’s chair and the results are exceptionally entertaining. Layer Cake is a cinematic treat.
Daniel Craig (Road to Perdition) plays our untitled lead, referred to in the end credits as “XXXX.” He’s a cocaine dealer but not a gangster by any means. He wants to make his money, not step on any important toes, and then walk away on top and without any gaping holes in his body. Craig is summoned by his boss Jimmy (Kenneth Cranham) and given two missions, whether he wants to accept them or not. The first is to relocate the missing daughter of a very powerful friend of Jimmy’s. The second, and far more dangerous job, is to secure a package of millions of stolen ecstasy pills and make a profit. Complicating matters is the angry Serbian mob that the pills were stolen from. They’ve dispatched a deadly assassin known as Dragan to track down their stolen drugs and kill anyone involved. Craig is left to juggle the investigation, find a buyer, stay ahead of Serbian hitmen, get some time in with a hot new girl, and all the while keeping his higher-ups content enough not to kill him themselves.
Layer Cake should be the film that makes Craig the star he so rightfully deserves to be. This man is a modern day Steve McQueen with those piercing blue eyes, cheekbones that could cut glass, and the casual swagger of coolness. Craig grabs the audience from his opening narration as he explains the ins and outs of his business. We may never see Craig sweat but he still expresses a remarkable slow burn of fear so effectively through those baby blues. He’s in over his head and the audience feels his frustrations. In an interesting character twist, when Craig does resort to killing, he’s actually tormented and haunted by his actions.
As with most British gangster flicks, there are a batch of colorful characters that leave their mark. Dragan (Dragan Micanovic) is a wonderfully enigmatic ghost of an assassin always one step ahead of Craig and the audience. Morty (George Harris) and Gene (Colm Meaney) add heart and bluster as Craig’s trusted right hand men. But the actor who steals the whole film with a malevolent glee is Michael Gambon (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). He plays Eddie Temple, the man behind the men behind the scenes. Gambon delivers the harshest of speeches with a velvety pragmatic calm. We don’t know what runs deeper with Eddie, his tan or his scheming.
Sienna Miller plays the thankless love interest to Craig. She’s pretty, sure, but there isn’t much acting ability on display in Layer Cake beside some smoldering glances. We never really know what Craig sees in her besides being another cute blonde to choose over. Miller isn’t alone in the “underwritten character department.” Layer Cake is crammed with secondary characters that pop in and out when it’s necessary. It’s not too annoying but it does mess around with an audience?s ability to follow along coherently.
Layer Cake is not one of the slick, whack-a-mole ventures Ritchie has given us (pre-Madonna). No sir, this is a brooding, serious and nearly terrifying look at the old adage “crime doesn’t pay.” Very few crime centered films express the day-to-day anxiety of just being a criminal. Jimmy reminds Craig that he’ll never be able to walk away because he’s too good an earner for his higher-ups. In Layer Cake, you can get killed for being too greedy, being too careless, being too good at your job, and even just being in the wrong place. Eddie sums it up best whilst describing Faust: “Man sells his soul to the devil. It all ends in tears. These things always do.”
Vaughn has a polished visual sensibility that doesn’t overwhelm the viewer. He keeps the camera fluid and steady with a minimal amount of cuts. A nifty opening scene involves an imaginary drug store (stocked with pot, cocaine, and the like) melting into a real drug store (one hour photo, impulse items at the register). When the tension does mount Vaughn knows just how to turn the screws. A late sequence involving a chase between the SWAT team and our batch of criminals had me on the edge of my seat. For a first time director, Vaughn also has great patience. He doesn’t rush his storyline and he doesn’t suffocate his movie with visual flourishes. He also has a great deal of faith in his audience’s intelligence. This isn’t as lively as Snatch or Lock, Stock, but that’s because Vaughn’s film is also much more serious and dangerous.
This is an intricate and gripping film but it might be a little too complex for its own good. Twists and double-crosses are expected in this genre, but writer J.J. Connolly has so many characters running around and so many hidden agendas that it’s nearly impossible to keep track. Some of the subplots and back stories add very little like the inexplicable “Crazy Larry” flashbacks. I left the theater still confused about plot points but refreshingly satisfied nonetheless.
Layer Cake is the most thoroughly exhilarating time I’ve had at a theater this year. This pulpy daylight-noir caper is full of memorable hoods, plenty of twists and turns, and a star making performance by the steely-eyed wonder that is Daniel Craig (rumored to be the next 007, though in my heart I’ll always root for Clive Owen). Fans of Ritchie’s frenetic gangster flicks should be entertained. Anyone looking for a clever and exciting potboiler that treats violence and crime seriously should start lining up immediately. If you’re suffering from the cinematic wasteland that 2005 has shaped up to be so far, then have yourself a generous helping of Layer Cake and thank the Brits.
Nate’s Grade: A
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
Back in 2005, Layer Cake was really a proof of concept movie for many items. It was proof that someone could take a Guy Ritchie-style crime pot boiler with colorful Cockney criminals and plenty of twists and unexpected violence and play it straight and serious. It was proof of Matthew Vaughn as a director, who had previously served as a producer of those early Ritchie films. It was proof of Sienna Miller as the next It Girl, a proclamation that carried her for years despite mixed results with the movies. Most of all, it was proof of its lead, Daniel Craig, as being so suave he should be considered the next possible 007. James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli has gone on the record saying this movie is what officially put Craig on their radar and got him the gig that has defined his career trajectory. Twenty years later, Layer Cake is still a potent and smooth little thriller that glides right by on its intelligence, sex appeal, and Craig’s charisma
I find myself agreeing with so many of my original points from 2005 so I don’t want this re-examination to be merely a “ditto” without some additional critical analysis. Even though it’s based on a book by J.J. Connolly, who adapted his own novel, the movie feels very much in the company of those early Guy Ritchie movies that Vaughn began producing. Ritchie burst onto the international scene with 1998’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, a brash and stylish crime comedy with outlandish characters, violence that alternated between visceral and slapstick, and twisty plots that often left your head spinning. It was like a mixture of Tarantino and a more lewd Looney Tunes cartoon. While the early Ritchie films, including my favorite, 2001’s Snatch, have their share of characters with grounded stakes, the reality is exaggerated, with the appeal being these grandiose personalities butting against one another. No one would confuse one of these Ritchie movies with a realistic portrayal of London criminals. They’re fun. What Layer Cake does so well is take a Ritchie-esque premise with plenty of low-life screw-ups and hardasses and plays it straight. It takes this middle-level drug distributor and makes his life less a comedy of errors and more a never-ending anxiety attack about how he can become undone from any angle. The movie sure doesn’t make a life of crime look appealing.
Craig’s character, named XXXX, is a smart guy just trying to keep his head down and do his job. The problem for him is that he’s too good at earning money for bad men who like money. In this life, you can get killed for any number of reasons, some of them logical and pragmatic, and others rash and illogical: not being a good enough criminal, being too good of a criminal, thinking he’s too good of a criminal, someone else wanting to make a name for themself and establish cred by going after you, dumb luck, etc. XXXX has his rules and standards to live by to ensure he limits his risk, but when your profession is literally dealing with money and unscrupulous types, there is no absolute zero in that risk. He may be smart and measured but he’s also working with plenty of stupid people who don’t know they’re stupid, and then you mix in vice and avarice with that, and it can be a combustible cocktail of dangerous idiots intruding on whatever peace and distance XXXX has cultivated for himself. In the movie, XXXX is burdened with competing tasks. He’s been offered a stash of stolen ecstasy pills, and his slimy boss wants them sold no matter what, but the assassin hired to retrieve them definitely wants them back too. Either way, our lead character is endangering himself by making someone unhappy. He’s dropped into the sticky morass of power plays and competing interests that will challenge his intended neutrality.
I think the ending for Layer Cake is brilliant and very fitting. For almost two hours, we’ve followed XXXX through hell and back and it looks like he’s found a way out, siding with the right hoodlums and eliminating different risky angles needing to be resolved. He’s kept to his stated retirement of not going out on top and instead going out while comfortable and capable. He’ll leave the business to his associates because he’s tired of looking over his shoulder. And as he walks out with his pretty lady (Sienna Miller) around his arm, that’s when he abruptly gets shot by Sidney (Ben Whishaw – yes, the future James Bond is killed by his future Q). This isn’t some tough or some hotshot; he’s a lanky nephew to another gangster, and he hasn’t exactly shown anything close to a killer instinct. In his brief appearances beforehand, he’s seemed out of place, like a latchkey kid who wandered into a criminal enterprise and everyone has been humoring him for good measure. The only thing he has is… was… the blonde girlfriend (Miller) who’s clearly not interested in him. After playing it so cool and calculated, he’s taken out by this twerpy nobody because he had the audacity to try and steal “his girl.” Even if you are the smartest guy in the room and you’ve made all the right moves, all it takes is one twitchy trigger finger and one grumbling grievance to take you from living to dead. Our hero is denied his happy ending driving off into the sunset with his modest sums of money and his newly acquired pretty woman. Try as he might, XXXX, gunned down mid-sentence as he reveals his real name, becomes just another unfortunate corpse.
Vaughn’s skilled direction immediately made him an attractive target for bigger studio fare. He was originally attached to direct 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand but left weeks before filming for stated “family reasons.” In 2023, Vaughn revealed that he left because of the tight production timeline, going from pre-production to a complete movie in under a year, but it was really the shady behavior of Fox execs that pushed him out the door. Apparently one exec put together a fake script to lure Halle Berry back, including scenes of her character Storm saving vulnerable children in Africa to appease Berry, scenes that were never intended to ever be filmed. It was a ploy to trick her into signing onto the film. After two more geek-friendly adaptations, 2007’s Stardust and 2010’s Kick-Ass, Vaughn was courted yet again back to the X-Men franchise. Once again there was a tight one-year turnaround deadline but Vaughn stayed on board and delivered what I consider to be the best X-Men movie, 2011’s First Class. It revitalized the declining franchise, enough so to lure Bryan Singer back. Singer had departed in 2005 to make his Superman movie, opening the door for Vaughn’s first foray with the world of mutants. Now that Vaughn had reinvigorated the franchise with a new cast of younger actors, Singer was ready to take it back to helm 2014’s Days of Future Past. Vaughn was rumored as one of the potential names to make the first new Star Wars movie in ten years. Instead, he made his own action franchise with 2015’s Kingsman. Granted it was based upon the comic by Mark Millar, the same author behind Kick-Ass and Wanted, but it was Vaughn’s signature all over this new spy franchise. Vaughn had constructed a new Bond for a new age. At this point, I was dubbing Vaughn the best working director to use studio money. Each movie was different but made with style and panache with great structure and payoffs. And then…
I think he got so enraptured with the world of Kingsman that he’s now trapped himself creatively. In the ensuing years, he’s made one Kingsman sequel and one prequel, both of them varying degrees of underwhelming, and another action spy-thriller that might as well be called Kingsman-lite, 2024’s Argyle. For an artist that was dabbling with so many genres beforehand and finding sure footing and a way to make his stamp within each, he now feels stuck, finding diminished returns with each iteration of yet another swanky spy action movie with snark. I’m not even an Argyle hater, a movie that appeared on numerous Worst of the Year roundups but one I consider perfectly fine as a TNT Sunday-afternoon kind of chill entertainment. I loved Kingsman when it was originally released in 2015, but looking back, it appears like this was Vaughn building his own prison brick by brick. Maybe he was too preoccupied with turning it into a franchise with many tendrils stretching all over. I truly wish Vaughn would hop genres once again and leave the realm of spy action to others at this point. Maybe he needs a return to something straight akin to Layer Cake without its tongue already so firmly implanted in-cheek.
But this movie will forever be known as the movie that secured Craig as the next James Bond. He had been working in movies for a while with some high-profile supporting roles like 1998’s Elizabeth and 2001’s Tomb Raider and 2002’s Road to Perdition, but this was a platform that showcased the suave presence of this actor like nothing before. He was so magnetic and a perfect choice for this character, and just listening to him try and talk his way out of jams with so many loose canons was as impressive and entertaining as any high-stakes chase or shootout. These sort of star-making roles are rare and even more rare when they do indeed prove to be star-making. It becomes an artifact to analyze what qualities people with money and influence were won over by. It’s interesting that Craig’s character is so anti-guns and wanting nothing to do with the more unsavory and violent aspects of his profession. When he does hold a gun for the first time, one he compliments as being “really pretty,” he holds it out and strikes a pose, dashing through a hallway like he was James Bond, and it’s just especially funny with hindsight.
The movie is also filled with familiar faces that would become even more familiar over the years, including Tom Hardy, Sally Hawkins, Whishaw, Burn Gorman, and some Vaughn regulars, alums from Snatch and Lock, Stock, Jason Flemyng and Dexter Fletcher. Flemyng became Vaughn’s lucky charm, appearing in his first four movies in some capacity, much like Greg Grumberg does for J.J. Abrams. There you go, an SAT-style relationship sentence I never thought I’d write: Jason Flemyng is to Matthew Vaughn as Greg Grumberg is to J.J. Abrams. My original review in 2005 highlighted Michael Gambon as the biggest honcho, the top tier of this criminal layer cake. I wrote: “He plays Eddie Temple, the man behind the men behind the scenes. Gambon delivers the harshest of speeches with a velvety pragmatic calm. We don’t know what runs deeper with Eddie, his tan or his scheming.” He’s so good at being so malevolent without ever having to raise his voice or anything outwardly hostile.
This movie has a personal factor for me because I was so highly anticipating it that, during a trip through the British Isles with my father in May 2005, I bought it on VHS overseas. I naively thought that while DVDs had different regions to thwart piracy, that VHS tapes would be rather universal considering it’s just tape being read. I got home, popped it into my American machine, and the thing wouldn’t work. This was one of the biggest souvenirs I got for myself during that trip, which my father wanted to embark as something memorable we could share together, and now that he’s recently passed, I do think back on those experiences and part of me wishes my 23-year-old self would have been more actively appreciative. So now with Layer Cake, part of me will always think about that VHS tape, and that trip, and my father, and it will make me miss him more, but I am glad we got to share that experience.
Ever since I’ve been doing this re-review project, now going on five years, it’s a relief to see my twenty-year-younger self having written a smart and articulate review, especially when I mostly agree with it even so many years later. Again, I find myself nodding along to just about everything I had written with my past critique, from singing the praises of Craig and the general examination of day-to-day anxiety, to shaking my head at the underdeveloped Sienna Miller character served as little more than a trophy for our hero to take with him into retirement. It still is a movie overstuffed with characters and storylines and antics that probably could have been trimmed around the edges, but that same burdensome feeling connects with the emotional state of our lead, the anxious feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to achieve it, so in a way, it’s excusable. I don’t know if I think the movie is quite at the same level, calling it “thoroughly exhilarating” seems a bit much, but Layer Cake is still a movie that proves fresh even twenty years later, and one worth a second helping.
Re-View Grade: A-
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A Working Man (2025)
You can see the reasoning behind a movie like A Working Man. It’s based on a series of popular novels by Chuck Dixon, and it looks like a spiritual sequel to 2024’s The Beekeeper, with the same director and star and roughly the same formula of bad man comes out of retirement to enact extreme vengeance on bad people. While The Beekeeper was entertaining mostly for its incredulity and becoming a self-parody of these kinds of loner action vehicles, A Working Man just feels like any other mediocre genre entry that populates the realm of lower-budget direct-to-streaming action. Jason Statham stars once again as a man of the people, a construction foreman, who also happens to be an ex-Royal Marine. The daughter of a friend is abducted for sex trafficking, or taken if you will, and Statham has to use his particular set of skills to crush some skulls and save the girl. I’m struggling to remember much of this movie because there’s nothing that truly stands out. It goes about its business with a pre-programmed utility, delivering Statham to a new bad guy every ten minutes or so as he works his way up the scuzzy ladder of bad men in bad suits. I guess that might be something memorable, one of the bad guys has an exquisitely bad suit, enough that others even question and comment. There aren’t any memorable villains or exchanges or even action sequences. It’s all so rote and mechanical and so easily forgettable. There’s nothing here worth spending almost two hours for, and there’s certainly little here to get anyone excited for a possible franchise of Statham being a faux working man striking back for the little guy.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Mountainhead (2025)
Mountainhead is the first project from writer Jesse Armstrong after the award-winning run of HBO’s Succession. His latest excoriating black comedy takes aim at the tech bro billionaire class and their destructive narcissism during a weekend getaway that descends from petty dick-swinging to plotting a worldwide coup. We’re trapped in this glittering lodge with four selfish billionaires (Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith) turning on one another. We’re never meant to empathize with them, only disdain their grievances and slights and unchecked egos and oblivious nature to taking accountability. One of them has released a new generative A.I. that is creating chaos around the globe, with sectarian violence fomenting and the public having a difficult time telling reality from fakery meant to enrage and divide. There’s a lot of phone checking in the movie. Listening to their banter can be like being in a tailspin of self-important CEO tech jargon as they actively dismantle society. The problem is that the movie feels like its stewing in a lower gear for so long, waiting for some escalation or encroaching insight. Then there’s a significant jump for its final act that doesn’t feel set up, and the tone of the movie is too indifferent to expect serious blood by the end. It’s a movie that gets by in its cutting remarks and retorts, but I grew tired of all the peacocking and pomposity of these supposed friends because it felt like the same conversation on repeat without new details or insights. The foursome do well but the real acting standout is Smith (Gotham’s Edward Nygma) as the pathetically vain and insecure Venis. Here is a man you will want to punch in hs smug, grinning face. Mountainhead feels like an under-developed episode for Succession that needed more shaping and direction with its blizzard of down time with bad people.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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The Accountant 2 (2025)
I’m going to start this review by doing what everyone loves to read, the author patting themself on the back. Back in 2016, I found The Accountant to be an enjoyable thriller with a compelling main character that answered the question, “What if Jason Bourne was actually interesting as a character?” I concluded my original review with this observation: “It’s rare that a movie leaves me wanting more, and it’s even more rare when a movie leaves me wanting to watch a weekly variation of Christian Wolff living as whiz kid accountant by day and enforcer of justice by night.” Over the years, The Accountant became one of the most popular streaming movies, a real word-of-mouth sensation that gave it life long after its theatrical release. It was enough that another studio, Amazon MGM, wanted to buy the rights to pay Ben Affleck to produce a sequel that hit theaters and now is available on streaming, thus ready to be the next great movie that dads fall asleep to. It took longer than expected but The Accountant 2 does fulfill my request, showcasing what a regular series could be, for better and worse.
Christian (Affleck) is like Batman if Batman had Autism and did his own taxes. He has a multi-million-dollar foundation that looks for wrongs to right, and this time he’s called back into the action by the sudden death of Ray King (J.K.Simmons), the retired agency head who was tracking the elusive accountant for years. Ray was obsessed with a family lost to human trafficking and hoped to find the missing child. Christian takes up the case and invites his once-again estranged brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) to help.
The positives from the original Accountant still shine through, namely the entertainment value of Christian as an outsider character trying to fit into the larger world. He’s an unexpected and often funny person but also a man with his own code of justice, and it’s a treat to watch him bomb through a marathon of speed dating one moment and punch guys in the throat the next moment. Affleck is still enjoyably dry as the lead, and the movie is at its best in the moments where Christian and Braxton are butting heads. It takes a longer than it should to reintroduce Braxton and bring him back into Christian’s orbit, but once the brothers are together, the movie coasts on a chummy buddy comedy dynamic that can reliably work no matter the setting. That’s one of the features that led me to apply the movie into a TV adaptation; the characters are what make ordinary encounters that much more entertaining, and TV is the premiere realm for characters. We tune in on a weekly basis because we want to discover what the characters we love will do next. While The Accountant 2 is certainly a few steps behind its predecessor, the core dynamic that made it enjoyable for so many should still prove appealing to those same legions of fans.
The movie also demonstrates some creaky choices and execution that manages to make it feel less like a full and vital sequel and more like an iffy showcase for turning the franchise into that weekly TV series. The central mystery feels lifted from any generic crime procedural about discovering a human trafficking network. The particulars aren’t that interesting or complicated or even that surprising given the general public’s understanding of human trafficking nowadays. I was waiting for this storyline to give us a little insight into the people most affected, the vulnerable families being exploited as they risk everything to search for a better life or more stable employment. I was waiting for something extra that felt like this storyline would be anything more than a ripped-from-the-headlines rescue mission, and it just doesn’t materialize. Much like 2023’s Sound of Freedom, the complex issue of human trafficking gets boiled down to whether or not our characters can save one unfortunate child. Hilariously, during the climax, the movie keeps cross-cutting between the brothers riding to liberate the kids from their imprisonment and an excavator digging a hole intended to be the kids’ mass grave. One inclusion is enough for us to understand the stakes, but the movie keeps cutting back repeatedly, as if anxiously asking, “Oh no, will the bad guys get the grave completely finished in time for the kids to be dumped inside?”
Already it feels like we’re sanding things down in order to fit a formula. Another indication is the relationship between the brothers. Apparently the brothers have not seen nor spoken with one another since the events from the first movie eight years ago. This is odd considering much of that movie’s story was divided with the Braxton character in parallel and finally recognizing his long-lost brother. After all their years apart it feels more likely that they would have stayed in touch or better. By not going that route, the sequel gets redundant reuniting the brothers again, but this time they’ll actually stick it out because they’ve gone line dancing together and killed even more dudes, the two most brotherly-bonding activities possible. It feels like setting up the team for more fun adventures.
Although redundancy is part of what holds back the movie. Take for instance back-to-back introduction scenes for Braxton. Our first scene is him trying to psych himself up, and we may think it’s for a date or to talk to a woman he likes, but it’s actually to ask whether or not he can adopt his selected puppy even earlier. Funny, sure, and gets to his loneliness. The next scene he’s trying to have a conversation with a woman who is clearly not as interested and this perturbs him, and upon him leaving we see the trail of bodies he has left behind in the aftermath of some job. Both of these scenes are accomplishing the same thing: Braxton has difficulty connecting with others and is lonely. Why did we need the first scene when the second conveys the same information plus his formidable nature? Braxton even brings up his desire to get a dog later and Christian considers his brother more a “cat person” because he lacks the stable job and responsibility to care for a canine. This moment could have been the first time the film introduced Braxton’s desire for a pet. We don’t gain much from knowing this already. This may seem slight but it’s indicative of a movie that is filling time (hence the mass grave cutaways). For a movie over two hours, there is a surprising amount of fat that could’ve been reduced for narrative redundancy and pacing.
The most obvious sequel idea for a special-skilled accountant would be to meet his match, and The Accountant 2 does and doesn’t do this (some spoilers to follow in this paragraph). Much of the movie is about locating two people, the child stuck in human trafficking and a mysterious woman (Danielle Pineda) who the bad guys are after. She is linked to the missing child but she’s also a highly-skilled killer who is seeking vengeance of her own. It turns out this woman, who I won’t identify, had a traumatic experience and has now become a savant action superhero. This revelation is meant to explain how an ordinary woman could become this badass killing machine, but it awkwardly feels like a ret-con to try and apply Christian’s condition to anyone under unique circumstances (you too could transform, kids). Except the first Accountant made it abundantly clear that Christian was as skilled and methodical as he is because of being on the Autism spectrum, allowing him a unique dedication and attention to detail. Obviously, Autism is not some shortcut to super powers. If it were, RFK Jr. would actually try and read something relevant about medicine. But it was established that the same skills that Christian uses to be such an exacting accountant are the ones he taps into to become a crushing crusader. As someone who has worked with many on the Autism spectrum, I didn’t see this portrayal as insulting or insensitive, especially since much of the movie is about humanizing people with differences and showing how their capabilities can rise above the preconceived perception of others. It wasn’t saying Christian was like all people with Autism, but this is, again, only my nuer typical perspective. I don’t know if in the ensuing eight years that returning screenwriter Bill Dubuque (Ozark) decided that it was less problematic to have the secret formula be the brain’s response to trauma rather than being on the spectrum. It opens up the movie to other highly-powered super spy assassins, but it also takes away something from the premise.
The actual bad guys are a rather uninspired gathering of goons and shadowy business types. At no point will you feel like our characters are genuinely under threat, and at no point will you remember anything about these villains except for their rote application in the plot. The main trafficker is an evil Boston crime boss (Robert Morgan) that could have been ported over from any other generic crime thriller. His one quirk is that he whistles “Pop Goes the Weasel,” even when he’s murdering migrants in the desert. So there’s that. His main muscle is just… some guy. Literally there is no even cursory attempt to provide any point of characterization for this guy, and he’s supposed to be one of our biggest threats? They could have given this guy, bare minimum, like an eye-patch or an affinity for pop songs, anything. As a result, we have two sets of antagonists, one of which is revealed as an avenging antihero while the others are so disposable to be laughable. At least the first Accountant film gave us a real opponent who, granted, ended up being the younger brother to our main character, but there was a real question what could happen when their paths crossed. Would they use their skills to eliminate the other?
The Accountant 2 might not add up to the same degree of entertainment and thrills that its first outing offered, and there are several missteps and redundancies that take away the edge and uniqueness of that original, but as long as Christian is still determined to help others, I’ll always find this possible franchise worth watching. Now look out for that eventual Amazon TV series to be scheduled right after Reacher.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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The Fountain of Youth (2025)
Ever since Indiana Jones famously swashbuckeled his way onscreen in 1981, studios have been chasing after recreating that dashing action-adventure treasure hunting caper that can win over mass audiences. The tough love is that there are very few that actually succeed. The closest might be the 1999 Mummy movie or perhaps the popular Uncharted video games. For some the National Treasure movies might apply. Unfortunately, most of these Indiana Jones hopefuls end up being proven unworthy of one’s time and especially in comparison to the great Dr. Jones, and so The Fountain of Youth also fails to recapture that excitement. The reportedly $180-million Apple TV original is directed by Guy Ritchie (Aladdin, The Gentlemen) and stars John Krasinski and Natalie Portman as the Purdue siblings who are racing to discover the famed Fountain of Youth before another team of shady corporate archeologists (booo!), that feature’s an ex-girlfriend (Eiza Gonzalez) of our lead, gets there first. He’s a wild adventurer trying to clear his disgraced father’s name, and she’s a professor who’s settled down with a family and needs a reminder of her adventurer roots. These kinds of movies live and breathe by their set pieces and charm. The problem with The Fountain of Youth is how forced everything feels. Krasinski can be a very charming actor, as evidenced to any fan of the American Office, but he’s the wrong kind of energy for this role. His carefree attitude comes across as smarmy and detached. Portman is also completely wrong for her role, never finding a degree of fun for her character, only becoming the nagging tag-along. There are some intriguing set pieces, especially aboard the literal Lusitania as it’s dredged back to the surface and then begins sinking again. That’s the highlight of the movie and it happens before the hour mark of a two-hour experience. Ritchie feels restrained in his application of his signature style, once more feeling like a journeyman for hire. The final setting whereupon our characters do find the Fountain of Youth is anticlimactic and builds up its magic hokum with late rule-changing as well as the most telegraphed villain turn. The movie’s tone is aiming for frivolity but because everything feels so forced and empty it instead comes across as obnoxious and tiresome. The drought continues.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Heart Eyes (2025)/ Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)
Slasher movies have been a popu;ar staple of horror, enough so to go through different phases of resurgence and ironic reinterpretation. They rose to prominence in the 1980s but are still wildly popular today, perhaps proving that there’s something timeless about a masked maniac chasing after dumb teenagers with his or her weapon of choice. Mix in heavy amounts of blood and gratuitous nudity, and it’s easy to see why this cost-effective entertainment strategy continues to endure. Two new 2025 slasher movies show the highs and middling lows of this horror genre known for its graphic kills and little else.
Heart Eyes is ostensibly about a romance-hating masked killer who stalks happy couples on Valentine’s Day and gets all stabby with their insides. However, it’s really a pretty charming romantic comedy that just so happens to also have a healthy amount of gore. The clever screenplay follows many of the same tropes we come to expect from the rom-com genre but now with a twist. It’s Boy Meets Girl, as Jay (Mason Gooding) and Ally (Olivia Holt) are forced to work together to save a romantic ad campaign gone wrong. It’s Girl getting over the pain of her recent breakup with the emergence of a handsome new man in town. It’s Guy and Girl butting heads before creating sparks. And then they’re chased repeatedly by the masked killer. They yell, “We’re not even a couple,” but it makes no difference; their chemistry is just that undeniable. In that regard, this murder menace is actively driving these two would-be lovebirds together, forcing them to rely upon one another for survival, and revealing parts of themselves. If you cut out all the horror parts, it would still work as a romance, but it’s even more entertaining to watch how the two genres, both beholden to their formulas, mash so bloody well. The banter is witty, the silly are over-the-top gory, and this is a rare movie that could be loved by gorehounds and foolish romantics. It’s an elevation that is self-aware but not obnoxiously, more silly tongue-firmly-in-cheek. You can tell there is a love for both of these genres from the filmmakers. Heart Eyes is a fun and refreshing spin on the old.
The newest Fear Street movie, based on the scream teen novels by R.L.Stein, is by far the weakest in the Netflix horror anthology series. Prom Queen is a pretty straightforward rehash of your 1980s high school movie staples of horny teens, bitchy popular girls, the less popular girl striving for Prom Queen and having to reconcile the changes she’s willing to make to be a winner, and a knife-wielding killer. Ah, the nostalgia. The issue is that there’s nothing separating this movie from, say, Prom Night, either the 1980 original or the PG-13 remake in 2008. The most thought put into this movie is the gruesome kills with some decent gore, but the whole movie doesn’t even play like a cartoon. It plays like a TV special you’ve watched before, something not just outdated but that’s been iterated upon iterations, a bland copy of a copy of a copy. The mystery of who might be the killer has some slight fun but the culprit should be easy enough to suss out when you take into account what actors have names that you remember. There’s nothing wrong with emphasizing the more gruesome exploitation elements of the genre, but the kills aren’t that memorable or clever, nor are the characters that interesting even as generic stock roles. I found myself confusing many of the multiple Prom Queen candidates (why are there so many pale brunettes?). The previous Fear Street movies released in 2022 had an interesting gimmick connecting them with the history of the town going back centuries to explain its crushed nature. Prom Queen just exists in this space without doing anything to connect to the larger Shadyside mythos and cross-generational storytelling. It feels so dreary and perfunctory and rather boring, shuffling along like a zombie wearing the husk of Fear Street. It’s just not fun. It’s not outlandish enough to be silly and too dumb to be self-aware. It’s mostly unimaginative cliches warmed over and unrelated to a far more stylish and ambitious horror series. This is a Prom Queen that deserves a bucket of blood and social ostracism instead of any accolades.
Nate’s Grades:
Heart Eyes: B+
Fear Street: Prom Queen: C-
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Until Dawn (2025)
I’m going to do something I don’t know if I’ve ever really done before in my twenty-five-plus years of toil as a film critic. I’m going to devote almost the entirety of this review to try and make sense of the ending and its cascading choices that confound and astound me. I’ll present some spoiler-free analysis beforehand but, dear reader, this is going to be a spoiler-heavy review because, quite simply, it’s all I want to talk about as it concerns Until Dawn. The horror movie is an adaptation of a 2014 PlayStation video game that itself was fashioned like a ten-hour horror movie. It was a love letter to the horror genre and your goal was to keep as many of the characters alive as you could through quick-time events and choices that could have lingering and unexpected consequences later in the game. It was, above all else, fun, and news that Hollywood was going to turn it into a movie made a degree of sense. After all, it was practically an interactive movie to begin with. Then news matriculated that they weren’t really adapting the game and instead were making something new and different, so why call it Until Dawn? Beyond the cash-grab from the use of a familiar name, if you’re going to be Until Dawn in name only, why not just be that original horror idea and let someone else actually adapt Until Dawn as it was? You’re not going to get another crack at this title, so why is the first attempt one that could be done without the game existing? Regardless, the movie is a bad adaptation of the game and a bad use of dwindling brain cells.
Five teenagers make a trip to search of Clover’s (Ella Rubin) missing older sister. They trace her last recording to a gas station just outside the mining town of Gore County. The gas station attendant (Peter Stormare) lets these curious kids know that weird things happen in town, and sure enough the weird stranger is right. The teens take refuge in a visitor center with a guestbook and a peculiar hourglass time piece on the wall. Soon enough they’re beset with masked killers and monsters and each of the five friends is slaughtered. Then they wake up back in the visitor center with the hourglass starting over. They have to learn about this mysterious location to try and stay alive all the way… until dawn!
Before the heavy spoilers begin, I’ll provide a few accolades to what the movie does well. Director David F. Sandberg (Shazam!, Lights Out) has a clear affinity for the horror genre and can summon some pretty effective and skin-crawling imagery. I actually like the premise of a horror time loop, though this was also covered with the tongue-in-cheek genre tweak that was 2017’s Happy Death Day. However, that movie primarily dealt with a slasher scenario whereas Until Dawn can mix and match different genres, which makes each new iteration feel like a blank slate to explore. I loved the shortest loop, where the characters hold up in a bathroom and gruesomely discover what happens if you drink the local water. It’s the best development in the movie and one I’m glad the script revisits from time to time. With most time loop movies, once the characters adjust to the reality that death is not final, they get a little more loose with their physical well-being. I enjoyed some of the turns the characters make with the understanding that they’ll come back again. The visual nods and connections to the game are there without feeling too gimmicky. Plus, having Stormare come back to play a variation on his nattering psychiatric weirdo from the game is exactly what the movie adaptation needs. Stormare is on his own unique wavelength.
Now, the madness. Abandon all hope ye who enter the spoiler section of this review.
I don’t understand this movie. At all. I read over its Wikipedia summary and watched a few of those YouTube explanation videos to see if it was just me and I missed important pieces of information that would connect the various elements together. It’s not me, folks. These story elements don’t connect. They don’t form a coherent whole. I don’t need a reason why time loop scenarios happen; they never explained it with the genre grandaddy Groundhog Day, and if it’s good enough for Groundhog Day, it’s good enough for your movie. The problem is when they try to explain and it actively makes things worse, because now you begin to question everything. I liken it to 2019’s Us, a movie with plenty of outlandish story elements including the existence of a same-age evil twin for every person but living in a subterranean mimicry of surface life. I would have happily accepted that as-is, but then the movie tries to find a real explanation for where these people came from and why, and now the illusion of ignorance is shattered. Now all those pesky questions start flooding the mind that could have before been kept at bay.
Let’s examine the explanations for the two primary mysteries: 1) why there are monsters, and 2) why there is a time loop trap. Again, both of which didn’t even need explanations but here we go.
The mythology of the game gets ported over in starts and stops, but the movie keeps the setting of a mining town that had a tragic collapse that devastated the town. In this version, the majority of the town fell into a sinkhole below the earth. Do we get to explore these exciting and creepy locations? Nope. One of the town’s psychiatrists (Stormare) is still alive and continuing his mad experiments for… reasons. Like the game, there is a curse wherein if you resort to cannibalism you will become a spooky wendigo monster, so the creatures are a result of the former townspeople and other past residents from the previous time loops. Fine. I can accept that. However, late in the movie, our creepy psych doc clarifies for Clover that things aren’t just all in her head, a nod to the original game. Except that ending would have made more sense. The new ending says that Clover’s fears are responsible for manifesting the different antagonistic monsters and killers. Okay, so we’re externalizing the internal, fine, but why her? Why not any of the other friends? Does this mean every previous group was also responsible for manifesting their own tormentors based upon personal psychological fears? Why are we including this roulette wheel of terrors on top of the constant of the wendigo creatures? How is this even happening because the movie gives no scant indication? Do the deadly rules get reset with each new group? In our story, the characters can’t drink the water, but what about other groups? If every group is manifesting the same avatars of fear then why not just adopt them as stable rules? Why is this one man staying behind to catalogue the results? He’s mortal so he just lives in the sinkhole or works at the gas station, waiting for wayward teens to stumble into his next experimental group? Who is keeping the lights on in this visitor center? What does this guy do during the “off season” when there are no looky-loos? Does he have to feed the existing wendigos like some kind of demented zoo? What is to be gained from all these experiments? Is he planning on publishing his research later? What is this guy’s regular life like?
Then there’s the time loop explanation which is -wait for it- nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why are characters getting second and third and thirteenth chances to survive until dawn? Why is it thirteen? The movie doesn’t even have the time to demonstrate thirteen loops, instead jumping from like the fourth straight to the last one through the annoying use of, “Oh, let’s watch these film clips we took that we don’t remember.” If you didn’t have the interest or time for thirteen loops, why even make it thirteen? Why does the number matter if they inevitably turn into wendigos from desperate cannibalism? You would think the loops should be infinite to guarantee this result. Why would the other victims bother writing their name in the guestbook every loop? It establishes a timeline of sorts, but if writing can last in this guestbook, why doesn’t anyone write anything other than their name over and over? Detailing your experiences and lessons learned as a living record might be helpful to future loopers. Also, what obligations do these people feel about signing their names in the guestbook? Who accepts getting murdered over ten times but is still being a stickler for signing their name, and for what? Are they getting some little feeling of superiority that they were able to scribble their name thirteen times? Where did the hourglass come from? It definitely looks like it was installed with purpose, so did these just materialize? Why do the timeloops even consider having a mechanism for letting participants win and escape? What about the other quirks like how the weather is affected by the bad vibes of this place? Even the rain knows better.
So, in summation, the time loops and manifesting monsters are unrelated to one another and there is no added context provided for like some ancient curse or witchy magic or anything to cause this mess. There is one nefarious wacko doctor who just hangs around for kicks, though why he is immune from the loops or the larger effects of the manifested monsters is beyond me. Is he recruiting the monsters like some sort of work foreman, telling this gnarly creature, “Need ya to pull a double today, Fangy.” It just all feels like scary elements working in parallel and occasionally drifting into one another’s orbit, but there’s no fitting or acceptable explanation, so why does the movie even try to present one in the first place? I’m stunned at how Until Dawn just completely unravels into incoherent madness by the conclusion, which sets up that there might be a larger universe of these doctors overseeing experiments. At that point, you might as well be watching The Cabin in the Woods. If you have no allegiance or familiarity with the video game, you might find enough to amuse you, at least for fleeting moments. I was open-minded to what an Until Dawn-in-name-only adaptation could do with a time loop gimmick, but the final results feel like an uneven grab-bag of imagery and ideas and directions that go nowhere.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Another Simple Favor (2025)
The sly 2018 original was a tart breath of fresh air, chronicling a friendship between two moms, one of means and one of lesser means, that unraveled a conspiracy of death, lies, secret twins, ransom, and murder. It was an enjoyable diversion that was elevated by snappy banter, a combustible chemistry between Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively, and some dishy twists. I wasn’t expecting a sequel, but with the same director and principal cast returning, I was at least a little intrigued as to what they would cook up. Instead Another Simple Favor is a warmed-over retread of the original. This time we travel to scenic Italy where Emily (Lively) has been released from prison and is now marrying a wealthy Mafia scion and wants Stephanie (Kendrick), her old frenemy, to be her maid of honor. At its best, the sequel has glimmers of the spiky fun of its predecessor thanks to the serviceably witty banter and ongoing fun between its lead actresses. Mostly, it’s a tangled mess chasing after what made the original entertaining and adult. I can pretend I fully understood the plot with its assault of soapy revelations, character intersections, and convoluted machinations, but that would be a lie. There are times where the movie feels like an overburdened runaway “yes and…” improv game, where anything and anything is accepted and absorbed into the script. I wonder if every additional movie is just going to add more versions of a certain character. If you’re a fan of the 2018 original there might be enough here to prove fleetingly engaging, like the fabulous villas and extravagant costumes, but mostly Another Simple Favor doesn’t feel like it’s doing anyone a real favor.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Black Bag (2025)
It’s Steven Soderbergh’s second movie of 2025, also with screenwriting vet David Koepp, and this time they’re tackling the spy thriller, centering on a marriage between two spies. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play a couple who both have clandestine lives, and when either one ventures into sharing sensitive details, they utter the code “black bag” as a conversation-ender. There’s a mole in the agency and Fassbender is tasked with uncovering the identity of the culprit, but he worries this investigation might ultimately point toward his own wife and then what’s a man to do? Black Bag is one of those more realistic, exacting spy thrillers, which means it’s churning at a very slow pace with minimal stakes before things ratchet up late. The parallels between trust in a marriage and trust in a spy agency are there but never explicitly explored for thematic richness. You know where the ultimate goal is, finding the mole, but every scene plays out more like a couples drama of squabbling, unhappy upper class winos with secrets and grudges. I had to occasionally remind myself, “Oh yeah, these are spies.” I never fully got on board the wavelength of this movie, finding its detached sexy vibe to be more glossy and meandering. The characters just weren’t that interesting to me. I kept waiting for things to pick up, and even when characters are murdered the tension level still feels unchanged. It’s all a little too heavily submerged under the icy tranquil surface for me. Black Bag is a sedate spy thriller presented as sophisticated but comes across a tad too detached and ultimately tedious.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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