You may not know this, I certainly
didn't, but Alex Cross is the latest in the Hollywood craze of
rebooting older franchises with a hip and younger cast. The franchise
in question is the Alex Cross series, consisting of the movies Kiss
The Girls and Along Came A Spider, which starred Morgan
Freeman as the eponymous police detective/psychologist. Despite my
love for Freeman, I've never seen either because Ashley Judd was in
one of them and A GHOUL CAN'T STAND ASHLEY JUDD.
I've never read any of the books the
series is based on either, so I have no idea how loyal they are but
I'm going to go out on a crazy limb and guess “not very”. I know
this movie is loosely based on the twelfth book of the series,
because if there's one thing Hollywood is awesome at it's adapting
books out of order.
Announced in 2010, Alex Cross
was originally going to be a VERY different movie. It was going to
star the ridiculously awesome Idris Elba, who took the role based off
the “phenomenal” script it had. It was going to be directed by
David Twohy, who is pretty hit (Pitch Black) or miss
(everything else Riddick) but is at the least a competent
director.
I have no idea what happened next, but
the script fell into the hands of a different company who bulldozed
everything and had it rewritten by the guy who worked on the previous
Cross movies. Check out this disturbing quote by the CEO of the
studio that released Alex Cross:
“When we came on, we looked at it
freshly, and just built it from the bottom up. Sure, Idris is a great
actor; Tyler Perry is a phenomenon. Tyler Perry is one of the most
significant entertainers in all of media. He is a huge cross-media
talent and presence, and he’s a terrific actor whose range is going
to be shown here. You’re going to see Tyler Perry like you haven’t
seen him. He’s 6’5″, he is a linebacker. He is an awesome
physical presence and is just going to tear it apart here. It’s an
intense, dramatic role.
“This is going to be the new Tyler
Perry franchise, a worldwide one. That’s the other thing: Tyler
Perry is going to take this to the worldwide audience. It’s just a
very different, much bigger opportunity. We went to him. If you can
get Tyler Perry or Will Smith, you try.”
Tyler Perry. A man whose claim to fame
is making about 400 straight-to-video movies where he dresses like an
old grandmother. This is Hollywood in the 2000s. Why bother putting
the work in to make a good and memorable movie when you can instead
have a mindless sequel-bait franchise that exists only to set up the
next movie? To illustrate this point, they brought in director Rob
Cohen to helm this film. Not only does Cohen have one of the biggest
box office bombs in history under his belt (Stealth), he's
also the man who started the Shakespearean the Fast and the
Furious franchise.
So is casting Tyler Perry as an action
star an inspired decision or if this going to turn out to be a
trainwreck of Madea-sized proportions? Grab your trusty sawed off
shotgun and get ready for A Ghoul Versus Alex Cross!
The movie sets the tone for what kind
of film it's going to be IMMEDIATELY, as we get a totally pointless
scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the story. Detective
Doctor Alex Cross- hold on. Detective Doctor? Is that really a thing?
It sounds so silly, like the time Peter was an
astronaut-cowboy-millionaire on Family Guy.
Detective Doctor Alex Cross (played by
Tyler Perry), Regular Detective Tommy Kane (played by Edward Burns),
and Other Regular Detective Monica “Moni”- hold on again. Moni?
Ugh, this has barely started and the stupidity levels are already
dangerously high. Those two and Other Regular Detective Monica “Moni”
Ashe chase and capture some killer in a scene meant to establish what
a strong bond the three friends have but falls rather flat. Get used
to that.
Couple things to point out here: Perry
is beyond monotone in this and has no energy WHATSOEVER. Even when
he's supposed to be animated or funny, he's just dead, which I find
very bizarre for a man who actually has a huge range. I'm not saying
Perry is a fantastic actor, but he's way better than this movie would
make you believe so we have Cohen to blame for not trying to get a
performance of any kind of out of him. After all, that'd distract
from all the “action”.
Second, Burns must have been battling a
killer case of strep throat while filming because he sounds worse
than the pilot from the Phantom Menace. So with this infinitely cliché opening
over, we go to another infinitely cliché one as Cross visits a
prison to play chess with an inmate. His opponent is a very young
woman with the strange nickname “Pop Pop”, who was convicting for
fatally shooting two people. Alex suggests that her crime lord uncle
actually committed the murders and she is just taking the fall for
him as he'd get life whereas she'll be out eventually. Pop Pop
dismisses this, so we all know it's instantly true.
We cut to Alex returning to his home in
the only nice area of Detroit where he lives with his wife Maria, his
two children Janelle and I Don't Get A Name Jr., and his mother Nana
Mama. Nana Mama? What is it with names in this movie? We get
introduced to all of them (except for I Don't Get A Name Jr.) through
some Lightning Fast Expository dialogue, as we also learn Alex has a
photographic memory and is damn near a Jedi with how he knows things.
But he didn't know Maria was pregnant, which she surprises him with.
His reaction is about on par with a person who just found a penny on
the sidewalk.
The movie takes a break for a
commercial for the new Cadillac CTS-V- wait, I thought I was watching
this on blu-ray? No I guess not, I must be watching it on network TV.
Hold on! That's Matthew Fox, whom I know for a FACT is in this
movie. Fox, playing the role of I Don't Get A Name Sr., is shooting a
Cadillac commercial apparently when he notices they're filming an
Alex Cross reboot movie and decides to butt in because Lost
was over two years ago and he hasn't done JACK since then. HAW HAW!
Get it, cos that was his character on- ah, forget it.
Fox is an assassin named Picasso but
they NEVER name him in the movie so I'm going to keep calling him
Fox. He gets a call from his employer who wires three million dollars
into his bank account as payment for something. Fox enters an old
church that has been converted into an underground cage fighting
arena. He buys his way into the match, using “the Butcher of Sligo”
as his ring name. He keeps glancing at a woman sitting ringside who
looks very important as she's surrounded by an entourage.
The match begins, and joy of joys, it's
shot in SUPER UP CLOSE So It's Impossible To Tell What's Going On
With Liberal Dashes Of Shaky Cam Vision! We haven't had that in
awhile, have we? I forgot how much I completely didn't miss it. Fox
goes on to beat the holy hell out of his opponent, easily winning the
fight but goes on to break the guy's arm because that's how he rolls.
He looks again at the woman, who slightly smiles at him. Mindless
and sadistic violence must REALLY turn her on!
Matthew Fox obsessively worked out
almost two hours a day for nearly six months while rigidly adhering
to a strict nutritional program, losing forty pounds and turning his
body into an ultra chiseled physique that makes Superman look like a
fat slob. It also caved his face in to the point
where even meth heads would be like “Damn dude, get some help!” I
find it difficult to buy that a woman who is
apparently a millionaire and lives in a mansion would be attracted to
him, but the very next scene is her taking Fox home so alrighty.
Her house is full of security guards,
who go as far as to frisk Fox upon entering. Unfortunately they don't
hang out in the bedroom as their boss and Fox go to have sex, because
Fox injects her with some kind of drug that paralyzes her. He takes
out a gun hidden in the sole of his shoe as we cut away with him
looking ominously around the room like a freaked out junkie. Alex is awoken that a night by a call
from his police chief, played by Dr. Perry Cox from Scrubs. Yeah, I
know he has a real name and he's been in a billion other movies, but
he doesn't even ATTEMPT to play a different character so he's Dr.
Cox.
He tells Alex there's been four murders
and that he's putting him on the case. We then join the rest of
Alex's team in Moni's apartment, where she just happens to be having
sex with Tommy. They're interrupted by Alex calling Tommy about the
murders, Tommy lying about his location because his seeing Moni is
supposed to be a secret even though he's positive Alex knows about it
because he's a Jedi. They babble on forever about their relationship
and we officially have had more pointless scenes than scenes vital to
the plot so far.
Alex picks Tommy up, chastising him
about sleeping with Moni because... God, who cares? This movie is
only twenty minutes in and already this is feeling like a Worst Movie
of the Decade candidate. How can you make twenty minutes of watching
a movie feel so excruciatingly painful? Let's just pray Rob Cohen
never falls into enemy hands or we are SCREWED.
Alex tells Tommy one of them will have
to leave the unit because his and Moni's relationship is disruptive
to it. Tommy volunteers to go but then Alex tells him HE'S leaving
because he's going to take a job with the FBI. So what was the damn
point of saying Tommy or Moni were going to have to leave then? Bah! They arrive at the mansion, where Tommy
concludes the murders were so well carried out they had to be the
work of a skilled team. Alex disagrees, saying it was the work of
only one man. Tommy argues this despite earlier saying how Alex is
ALWAYS right and knows EVERYTHING. Is this going to be the movie's
thing, contradicting everything a few scenes later?
Alex uses his powers of super crime
solving to reconstruct the crime scene, as it segues to a flashback
of Fox and the woman. Fox tells her he's going to ask her a question
and she has nine chance to get it right. He cuts off her thumb and
cauterizes the wound with a blowtorch, because THAT'S what this movie
needed was torture porn. He asks her what the password to her laptop
is.
We return to the present as Tommy holds
up a bowl with all of her fingers in it, which is shockingly gritty
for a PG-13 movie. Tommy also finds a drawing Fox left behind while
Alex finds a safe hidden in the woman's wall. They find it's
protected by a thumbprint reader, and yeah they're going to do this.
They “comically” argue over who is going to do the deed, because
that's what this movie needs: more uneven tone! Alex loses, taking
her thumb and using it to open the safe. Inside he finds a backup
hard drive of her laptop.
They take it back to the lab, where the
lab geeks find a series of emails between the woman and two major
business executives named Giles Mercier and Erich Nunemacher.
Studying the drawing Tommy found, Alex finds the letters “E” and
“N” on it, so they rush off to see Erich.
They go to his office to see him, but
the building security won't let them in without a warrant. What?!
Does this movie know what a warrant even is? We might be in for the
longest ride ever here. Security changes their tune when the giant
fountain in the lobby area quits working, which alerts them to the
fact something is wrong so they let the detectives in. We see Fox
climbing up the building inside a water piper that luckily is large
enough to fit a grown man. In
addition to his brutal workout regiment, Fox also did all of his own
stunts for this movie. It doesn't make this scene any less stupid,
however.
He cuts his way through the pipe and
sneaks onto the floor containing Erich's office. He starts picking
off the security guards one by one, the detectives hearing the
gunshots along with Erich. He activates a panic room door that seals
him and Tommy inside, leaving Alex and Moni trapped outside with the
crazy assassin. Tommy demands he open the door but Erich tells him it
can only be opened from the outside. Why?! So what happens if
everyone outside gets killed, you're just trapped in there til you
starve to death? Great planning guys!
Alex manages to get the drop on Fox,
pointing his shotgun at him. I actually had to freeze frame what
happens next because it's edited so horribly and is goes by WAY too
fast to see in real time. Fox places one foot on top of the other,
pushing a button on the top of his boot. This causes a concussive
bomb to fly off his belt that explodes, allowing him to escape. As
the bomb explodes, the film THEN cuts to slow motion instead of
earlier when it would have actually made sense and been effective.
Rob Cohen!
Tommy hears the explosion and puts his
gun to Erich's head, demanding he open the door or he'll pull the
trigger. Erich... opens the door? Why is he being such an asshole to the
people here to SAVE HIS LIFE? The movie is doing it wrong when I'm
openly rooting for the batshit crazy assassin who just cut all the
fingers of a defenseless woman off. Tommy spots Fox and shoots at
him, but only hits him in the arm. Fox again escapes with another
concussive bomb, fleeing the building.
Fox goes to his place, where we get a
poorly cut montage of crazy. He yells at an article about the
detectives he has hanging on his wall, punching it. Now here's what I
don't get: why would he have that? Did he know they were the ones who were
going to be put on his case so he researched all of them? How did he
know they were going to be the ones put on his case? This is Detroit
after all, it has to have like a million homicide detectives. This is
all just nitpicking but this all bugged me. Fox also does pullups,
because that's what crazy people do in these kind of movies.
Back at the police station, we learn
Erich is now on lockdown at Mercier's house. We get a really sloppy
rundown of things that basically amounts to the woman who got killed
was an executive officer for Mercier or something, the film did NOT
give a damn trying to make any of this clear. Alex believes Fox is
working up way up the chain, with Mercier the final target.
Dr. Cox arrives to talk to them in a
VERY weird scene where he starts off praising them for almost getting
Fox, but then midway through goes bipolar and starts berating them
for NOT getting Fox. Wow, we've upgraded to contradicting scenes
midway through them, that takes skill! The detectives go to meet with
Mercier, first meeting his assistant Paramita who is more tooth than
woman. Seriously, she's lucky she
hasn't got shot by poachers for that much ivory.
Paramita goes on to give a giggly
performance that one could call the “worst ever”, but I'm going
to instead say “slept with the right executive to get cast”. Or
maybe not, after she leaves to get her boss Tommy explains she's
“coked out to the gills”. Nice try movie, you're not fooling me.
Erich shows up next and is very nice
this time, especially to Moni. He tells her how flattering it was to
be saved by such a beautiful woman, to which she says with a line
like that she should have let him die. She quickly adds that she was
just kidding. HAW HAW! Oh, how hilarious. My side. FINALLY Mercier
shows up, played by some guy that kind of looks like Jean Reno if he
was the star of Supersize Me.
Ohh no, wait just a minute. That IS
Jean Reno?! NO WAY! Leon, what happened?! Did you
finally catch Godzilla and eat him? Anyway, Mercier goes out of
his way to talk about this gigantic gold pimp ring he's wearing
because NO WAY will this end up being important later. Subtle Rob
Cohen, real subtle. Mercier goes on to tell Alex about his
business, how they plan to rebuild Detroit into a utopia or whatever
but it's really more important to foreshadow Mercier is likely the
bad guy behind everything because every time there's a “turn a
hellhole into a paradise” plot the benevolent mastermind always
turns out to be a bad guy.
Seriously though, are we SURE this is
Jean Reno? As in THE Jean Reno? He is acting so horribly with these
terribly long pauses between words like he's doing a Captain James T.
Kirk impersonation or something. One could make many drinking games
out of this movie, one I would suggest is take a shot every time he
says “Detective... Doctor... Cross...”.
Reno prattles on forever but has no
useful information for Alex. In fact, he says the only reason he
agreed to meet with Alex was to determine if he was capable of
catching the killer. What does that even mean?! Reno said he knew
nothing about the killer, so how would he know what kind of man would
be able to stop him? What if he determined Alex WASN'T up to the job,
would he call up the mayor and order a different set of cops? I
really get the impression this script originally had nothing to do
with the police and they just clumsily shoehorned this stuff in when
they decided to adapt it to be an Alex Cross story.
Later we see Moni entering her
apartment, where Fox just happens to be waiting for her. Uh oh. We
cut to Alex and Maria having a night out where he tells her about the
FBI job, which she doesn't like because she doesn't want to move to
Washington D.C. Wow, Detroit to Washington? Talk about out of the
frying pan and into the other frying pan.
Maria says they'll figure it out
though, and goes to toast her husband. He tells her it's bad luck to
toast with water (and HUGE points to the movie here for remembering
Maria is pregnant, I seriously expected her to be tossing back
whiskey), but she dismisses that as superstitious nonsense and toasts
anyway. Pregnant with a third child and purposely ignoring a warning
about bad luck, is there anything else the film can do to telegraph
her death short of hanging a “I'm Going To Be Murdered By Matthew
Fox” sign around her neck?
Alex gets a call from Moni's phone, Fox
on the other end. He sends Alex a picture of a very tortured and dead
Moni in her bath tub. Fox tells Alex this is his only chance to
psychoanalyze him and that he wants the detective to ask him some
questions. They talk back and forth as we see Fox is calling from a
building across the street while setting up a sniper rifle. Alex
somehow manages to piss off Fox even though none of his questions
should have done that, but Fox is TEH CRAZY so whatever. Fox says how
pretty Maria looks and Alex starts running towards her but is too
late as Fox shoots her. She's not quite dead though so we can get the
“dying in a loved one's arms” scene, because this movie hasn't
had enough cliches already.
Alex asks someone to call 911 with all
the enthusiasm of a guy ordering a pizza over the phone. And not even
a good pizza, but one from like Pizza Hut. But it's all too late and
she dies, with Fox watching the whole thing through his scope. Why
doesn't he just shoot Alex right now? His job isn't to kill the
detectives but to kill Mercier, and killing Alex would make his job
all the easier. But no, he's one of the assassins whose arrogance
will prove to be his undoing because we've NEVER seen that before.
We join the film at Maria's funeral, as
Fox catches from his Cadillac parked across the street. He's drawing
a picture of Alex because that's WAY more important than going to
kill Mercier now that he knows the entire police force is at the
funeral rather than protecting the business man.
Later at Maria's wake, Tommy gets a
call from the lab a paralysis drug was found in Moni that matched the
one in the fingerless woman. Oh yeah, Moni died too huh? I'd totally
forgotten about that, and so did the movie! The drug only has a “24
hour half life” because plot convenience, which leads Alex to
believe Fox is buying it locally so they can start tracking him
through that. Nana Mama tells Alex that Janelle has gone up to her
room crying. I'll talk about this scene in greater
length at the end of the review, but the short story is Alex tries to
comfort his daughter by telling her that her mother's love for her
will never go away.
Alex gets another call from Fox, who
blames Maria's death on Alex. He says he was going to shoot him
originally like he SHOULD HAVE, but Alex pissed him off with his
psychobabble so he wanted to make him suffer. Um... you did ASK him
to use psychobabble, do you remember that? Does this movie have
Alzheimer's? That's really the only thing that would make sense here
besides the writers being COMPLETE HACKS. Fox taunts him by saying
he'll go to his grave with the knowledge that if he'd kept his mouth
shut his wife would be alive. Fox
does this scene looking right at the camera and talking to US. Get to
used to Rob Cohen throwing as many different camera techniques as
possible at us, because consistent look for a movie? What's that?
Alex goes down to his basement and arms
up with enough weapons to take down the Matrix. Nana Mama tries to
talk him out of going on a Revenge Rampage because of the cost it'll
have on his soul, but this is SO not that kind of movie so he ignores
her and leaves. He has a police escort take her and his kids to
safety, not even bothering to say goodbye to them because fuck 'em,
there's people to be a shootin'!
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