JdeBPJan 9

I am 45 minutes into The Courier (2019) that the TiVo recorded.

It's so bad that I'm now rooting for the bad guys to kill the target, which they could have done within 2 minutes as they had him precisely located on surveillance video, and get the movie over with.

The writers and director clearly have no competence with subject matter, character, exposition, or plot.

When in an early scene the actors playing the police making an arrest had machine guns pointing at one other, I knew that it wasn't going to be good; the motorcyclist zooming right through speed camera road markings in London, whilst the sound effects had her repeatedly changing up, were also a bad sign; but it has got worse still with hammy acting, characters doing inexplicable things, incomprehensible dialogue, bad sound, and plot holes large enough to march a small army through.

I'm not confident that I'm going to be able to stick the rest of this movie out.

#UKMovies #TheCourier #OlgaKurylenko #GaryOldman

Show threadJon RoachJan 9
@JdeBP it's a point of principle that I usually cheer on the baddies in films 😃
Show threadJdeBPJan 9

@FourT4

You wouldn't cheer this one on. He is in the security room of the hotel with video cameras showing where the targets are, on a walkie-talkie speaking to the henchmen with machine guns who are roaming the sealed multi-storey underground car park.

They are currently killing an Audi with automatic gunfire. Don't ask why no car alarms have gone off, how all of these vehicles can be broken into quietly and quickly, or how the Met police have not noticed any of this.

Hans Gruber would be telling the henchmen in broken German that the targets were on the up ramp some 30 metres behind them, so turn around and shoot them.

This bad guy is monloguing to re-explain something established as the opening credits were rolling, with his back to the bank of monitor screens. He seemed to be taking a small lunchbreak in an earlier cut away to the security room. The director hadn't told the actor to watch the monitors.

@bytebro
#TheCourier #DieHard #AlanRickman #UKMovies

Show threadBytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱

@JdeBP @FourT4

Ewww!
Not going there.

Jan 9 at 4:30pmWeb
Show threadJdeBPJan 9

@bytebro @FourT4

At almost 70 minutes in, the bad guy in the security room has stopped for a cup of tea and some texting. The targets have taken a break and done some grainy flashbacks to try to develop #OlgaKurylenko's character.

(For no really good reason, the police response to the deaths of several Met officers in a London hotel has to go through New York, which has given the henchmen a random 1 hour deadline for killing the targets. Exactly 1 hour, down to the second. The bad guy set a precise timer on his digital watch. Which thanks to the sound effects department has an audible tick.)

And now the henchmen are killing a stationery cupboard.

The cameraman is shaking the camera around like crazy. Because that says that an action sequence is happening. All of the characters are standing in one spot at the time.

I might end up finishing this movie just out of fascination as to how bad it can get.

#TheCourier #UKMovies #GoldenTurkeyAwards

Show threadBytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱Jan 9

@JdeBP @FourT4

This may be one of the greatest movie reviews ever written. I look forward to seeing something similar in the Grauniad soon :-)

"I might end up finishing this movie just out of fascination as to how bad it can get."

Show threadJdeBPJan 9

@bytebro @FourT4

To save you from suspense: At 80 minutes in the henchmen have figured out, after about 1 minute of story time full automatic gunfire, that they could simply kick the stationery cupboard over to get it out of their way.

I thought that the targets, who have broken out of the sealed car park, by dint of working out that with the lifts shut off they could take the stairs, and crawled through (what else!) ventilation ducts to the roof, might also figure out that they could just leave the building.

But apparently the location budget didn't stretch to that.

So instead they're back in the car park. #OlgaKurylenko has just had a big fight scene where continuity didn't remember from shot to shot whether it was against a wall, by a car, or out in the main aisle between the cars.

The other target is in the boot of an H-reg Volvo, which has to be some kind of metaphor.

#GaryOldman has chewed some scenery in New York. Probably for contractual reasons.

#TheCourier #UKMovies

Show threadJdeBPJan 9

@bytebro @FourT4

I'm at 98 minutes. After an escalation in which both sides suddenly discovered that they had technology, including an armed drone and a magic motorcycle helmet; and a small detour when the one remaining smarter henchman found that it *was* actually allowed to shoot Our Olga as she went up the ramp; we got to the interrogation scene.

The bad guy monologued some more. Olga was visibly not actually tied to the interrogation chair, so it didn't really matter that it was of the freestanding stackable kind favoured by church halls and schools. And the cars in the background disappeared between the long shots and the close-ups.

Convenient for the plot, the first car alarm went off in the entire movie, to be trumped less than a minute later when #OlgaKurylenko discovered an unexplained but very handy gun in a box just lying on the ground, which had not been there a moment before.

Home stretch, everyone! They're almost all dead.

#TheCourier #GaryOldman

Show threadJdeBPJan 9

@bytebro @FourT4

Marvellous.

The armed Met policeman just lets an armed foreigner in and walks off; and the NHS emergency room staff totally ignore someone with multiple stab wounds, a gunshot wound, and bleeding from the head.

And the makeup department must have spent a long time for just a few seconds of screen time of a pointless shot of #GaryOldman taking the eye patch off.

I thought that there was going to be a twist in the tail, that it was all a set-up by the daughter to get her father out of the picture, but it was not to be.

Quite why I expected something clever at the end of all of that execrable rubbish, I don't know.

#TheCourier #OlgaKurylenko #UKMovies