Director: M.J. Bassett
Writer: Brian Brightly
Cast: Aml Ameen, Rhea Seehorn, Roxanne McKee, Akshay Kumar
Runtime: 105 mins.
2019
The most charmingly stupid gesture in all of Inside Man: Most Wanted is setting the first scene during World War II. The literal connection is clear-- this is a hostage situation movie, and the thieves are trying to steal Nazi Gold from the New York Federal Reserve. The very same Nazi Gold from the opening scene. As for why we had to flash back 80 years to see the origin story of the Nazi Gold, well, I can only really think of one reason. The artists wanted to give us a little extra helping of action at the top. After the following scene's heist, the vast majority of the rest of the film is characters talking on the phone, then frustratedly slamming their headsets down.
There isn't much more to the plot of IM:MW. Our heroes are federal agent Dr. Brynn Stewart (Rhea Seehorn) and hostage negotiator Remy Darbonne (Aml Ameen), and they speak exclusively to criminal operative Ariella Barash (Roxanne McKee). It's perfectly simple. Brynn and Remy want to get the hostages out without casualties, Ariella is angling for safe passage. At least until the movie starts to reveal secret motivations, master plans, family ties... a bunch of overwrought soap operatics that aren't interesting enough to track.
I believe that some of this 'mythology' or 'worldbuilding' or however you might like to call it is a misguided attempt to canonically link this bargain bin movie with its predecessor, 2006's Inside Man. Setting aside the lame attempts at continuity, the two films are connected in name only. The former is a generally well-regarded Spike Lee thriller, starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The 'sequel' feels like the big kids left some building blocks behind for the tots.
I don't infantalize the film to be condescending-- its only redeeming quality is its childishness. We see this in the overwrought acting of the cast, like the seemingly mandatory slamming down of headsets. We see this in the way the characters make casual banter as if they're throwing darts rather than negotiating for the lives of dozens. We see this in the villains' hilarious melange of "European" accents. We see this in the silly dialogue, characters shouting things like, "You can't take a federal agent hostage!" with the same indignation of a child insisting that they cannot be tagged while they're touching the base. The combined effect is an unintentional one-- that we are watching the adult version of kids dressing up and playing cops and robbers. I mean... when the antagonist refuses to give her real name, she insists on the codename "Most Wanted." Where else would you hear that outside of a playground?
Unfortunately, the movie squanders its shot at being bad movie fun by taking itself far too seriously. From the lazy hip hop soundtrack, to the Michael Bay-lite-lite cinematography, to the tough guy posturing, the film is asking for far more respect than it has earned. By far the worst offender is the dutiful attempt to graft Meaningful Themes into the proceedings. Rhea Seehorn, who seems adrift here compared to her work in Better Call Saul, pays some half-assed lip service to sexism in the FBI. There's a limp attempt at complicated morality concerning American sovereignty and what it means to be in possession of Nazi Gold. I think there's some stuff about how far you would go for family, and of course there are characters saying to their rivals, "You're just like me." Ideas that are way out of this movie's caliber, and thus are promptly forgotten after they are invoked.
There is a baseline of competence in M.J. Bassett's directing that provides a sheen of mediocrity. But if you're going to watch a bad movie, the two qualities you least want to see are 'competent' and 'mediocre.' IM:MW would be so much more fun if it were more of a disaster, or more ambitious, or sillier. As it stands, it does the job it set out to do and immediately disappears from your memory.
0.5 / 5 BLOBS
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