Movie Review: A Buddy Comedy (?) with Organ Donation and a Big Body Count — “Runner”

Posted on September 8, 2026 by Roger Moore

The distributing studios may sweat over the fact that MGM’s “Runner” showed up on streaming just as Angel Studios’ “The Runner” was trotting into theaters.

One stars Gal Gadot as a lawyer/mother sprinting across London to murder a prosecution witness to save her kidnapped child. The other features Alan Ritchson as a delivery driver with “special skills” which he calls on to kill his way through bad guys in Brisbane, Australia to get a valuable organ donation to a dying little girl.

Both films are quite violent, and have mobsters/kidnappers making others do a lot of their dirty work for them, hurling threats and instructions by trackable cell phones. So you could see why Angel Studios might be peeved that MGM stole their thunder in streaming their title last week.

For viewers, it’s pretty much a wash. Both stumble and disappoint more often than they thrill.

Gadot’s thriller has pace but little sense of the “ticking clock” that builds suspense, and she’s a bit of a stiff when it comes to showing empathy or fear for an endangered child, or building empathy with the audience.

Hulking Ritchson, star of TV’s “Reacher,” is the sort of screen hero who hits people and bones break, spinal cords fold up and organs are rearranged. He’s a prettier Dave Bautisa, a humorless John Cena. But when he says he means business, we take it seriously.

“I’m not a man people mess with successfully.”

We see plenty of evidence of that in this flippant “buddy picture” whose bloody body count smothers any sense that it’s an “action comedy.”

Owen Wilson plays Ben, an organ donation courier who flies into Brisbane with a liver for a little girl further up “The Gold Coast.” Ritchson is Hank, who is A) the driver/deliverer/errand boy who normally picks up packages, say a rare Golden Conure parrot (I think) exchanged in a divorce settlement, or even an absentee politician on a bender who is needed for a vote, B) an ex-Navy SEAL, C) a recovering alcoholic who just collected his “one year sober” chip and D) irked as hell that his latest package is a passenger with a liver in a secure refrigerated case ready for transplant.

Chatterbox Ben shows up, climbs into dude’s Outback-ready 4-Runner, and will not shut up.

“I think I’m gonna win you over,” Ben chirps in his most cheerful Wilsonese.

That seems unlikely even before the black Land Rovers start chasing them through the streets, along the waterfront, with bullets flying, cars and trucks and buses crashing and the carnage and collateral damage piling up.

This “cartel” fellow, named Damien, of course (Rodrigo Santoro of “Westworld”), covets the liver. He shoots strangers in traffic and subordinates who disappoint him and he curses and threatens our mismatched heroes in English and Portugeuse.

“Don’t make me kill any more innocent people today!”

Fat chance of that, what with the coppers yelling “Drop your weapon!” before drawing their own and a steady supply of henchmen who fail to waylay that incredibly-rare bloodtype liver and the beefcake protecting it.

The script, by two unproven novices, lurches from ludicrous to laughable with rarely a surprise thrown in along the way. The direction leans into a chemistry that never comes close to clicking between our two leads, Mr. Talks-a-Lot and “brooding, drives fast punchy guy.”

But damn, the ways they have Ritchson dispatch bad dudes are creative. And for a film distributor that keeps things on the family side of “faith based” or something akin to that, this movie’s disregard for life is something of a shock.

How many shootings, stabbings and beatings-to-death do we witness? I lost count in the 30s.

The climax has every mano-a-mano brawl cliche in the history of the genre, including that knife that comes out for a “tchik tchik tchik tchik” stabbing sprre and that inevitable moment when the writers and their characters realize that the setting of this fight sometimes has a fire axe under glass.

Ritchson has instant credibility as a man of violence who swears “I don’t hurt people any more,” and doesn’t embarass himself as an ex-husband/grieving dad, either.

But as a foil for Wilson, riding two dudes on a beach bike to deliver a refrigerated liver, the light touch isn’t there, not from director Scott Waugh (The Jackie Chan/John Cena “buddy” thriller “Hidden Strike” was his), and not from Ritchson either.

And for those keeping movies-with-the-same-title score at home, that eye-rolling finale and its attempt-at-pathos epilogue makes this the lesser of two “Runners.” That’s got to be a relief to Gal Gadot, anyway.

Rating: PG-13, graphic violence, some profanity

Cast: Alan Ritchson, Owen Wilson, Leila George, Peta Sargeant and Rodrigo Santoro.

Credits: Directed by Scott Waugh, scripted by Miles Hubley and Tommy White. An Angel Studios release.

Running time: 1:37

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Classic Film Review: The Sweetest Stoner Comedy of them all — “Saving Grace” (2000)

Posted on September 8, 2026 by Roger Moore

A lot of stars slipped into allignment to get the twee British pot comedy “Saving Grace” into theaters.

It featured Brenda Blethyn in the title role, fresh off two recent Oscar nominations.

The film co-starred and was scripted by Craig Ferguson, a Scottish comic famous all over the British Isles, and already reaching U.S. audiences weekly on “The Drew Carey Show.”

And what did co-star and co-writer Ferguson, then eight years sober, think would tickle viewers’ funnybones at the turn of the millenium? A movie about a newly-widowed gardener taking up cannabis cultivation in scenic, coastal Cornwall, just t’make ends meet, y’understand.

“Saving Grace” is a sweetly ecccentric comedy about how one green thumb –– not belonging to her Scots stoner gardener, Matthew — and how she turns all she knows about plants and planting loose on the one profitable thing that can help her meet the mortgage and the bad debts her late husband left behind.

Small-time grower (in the village rectory’s hidden back plots) Matthew is thus sucked into a scheme he kind of instigates, but one which puts both of them in over their heads, and in a hurry.

Fending off the local constable is one thing. Keeping debtors at bay is another. And then there’s the French mobster they want to sell their best buds to. He’s played by one of my favorite French actors, the amusingly-accented and droll Tchéky Karyo.

“All ze people I deal with are scum,” he purrs to never-sold-pot-before Grace. “I’m a leetle scummy myself. You are not scum. Zat worries me.”

Grace has to strongarm Matthew into letting her be the one to try and “make the deal.”

“With the grrrrreatest respect,” Ferguson’s Matthew burrs. “I’m the young hip one. You’re the hip replacement.”

Matthew’s in love with the fair fisherlady Nicky, and she’s not into his childish pursuit.

“Nicky doesn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who’s irresponsible. And I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who isn’t Nicky.“

Colorful characters like the seemingly daft cop, the wise but perhaps not “hip” vicar (Leslie Phillips), the garden club spinsters who think cannabis is “tean” and the pot-loving village physician, played by Martin Clunes who’d go on to make a long-running series based on this fish-out-of-water “Doc Martin” fellow.

There’s little strain to any of this, no real sharp edges — despite the menace of bigtime drug distributors — just pretty sights (Port Isaac, Cornwall) and cute eccentrics at every turn.

Nicky and Matthew bicker like the cleverest couple you know.

“You’re getting older,” she says.

“These are laugh lines,” he retorts.

“”Nothing’s that funny,” is her punchline. Well, “Saving Grace” is. Pretty much.

Rating: R, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Brenda Blethyn, Craig Ferguson, Valerie Edmund, Leslie Phillips, Tchéky Karyo and Martin Clunes

Credits: Directed by Nigel Cole, scripted by Mark Crowdy and Craig Ferguson. A Fine Line release streaming on Tubi, Youtube, Pluto Amazon Prime and Roku TV.

Running time: 1:33

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Netflixable? “Husbands in Action” serve up Korean Goofballs in a Kidnapping Caper

Posted on September 7, 2026 by Roger Moore

If you watch one screwball Korean action comedy this year…

Damn. I just can’t pull the trigger on that sort of endorsement for “Husbands in Action,” a dopier-than-dopey kidnapping caper that “TV-MA” rating or not, seems aimed at kids.

It’s that childish.

Wacky sight gags, cartoonish fights, “logic” utterly deleted from the script and physics defied so often Bugs Bunny’s rolling his animated eyes, this one’s um “got it all,” as they say in the trades. But “it all” doesn’t amount to much.

So there’s this young mob kingpin, Du-joon (Kim Ji-suk) who is running all things underworld in Incheon via an AI gadget. The mobster of the future is confronted with the mob world’s past when older, heavier Yong-gang (Yoon Kyong-ho) gets out prison.

Young Blood can’t even bother pronouncing Mob Legend’s name right.

But hotshot detective Choong-sik (Jin Seon-kyu) is wise to, or more than happy to stumble into busting Du-joon before Yong-gang’s crew — which the cop once nicknamed “The Doodie Gang” — can make their move.

Not to worry. Du-joon’s adoring wife Hye Ran (Lee Da-hee) kidnaps the cop’s wife (Kang Han-na) and little girl (Oh Eon-seo). Let’s make a trade!

But the cop’s divorced. Si-nae (Kang) has remarried — to a goofy, younger “extreme sports” fan veterinarian, Min-seok (Gong Myoung). With the brains-behind-the-mob wife demanding her husband’s release, this exchange won’t just involve the cop who must break the law to free his new prisoner. It’ll require the presence of the screaming, mini-van drifting nutjob “Dog Doctor” riding shotgun, or driving.

“It’s always best to work together!” he declares (in Korean with subtitles, or dubbed into English).

The cop has to keep his promise to his little girl that “Justice will always win,” while dragging around this supposed dead weight who claims — and sometimes proves to have — “special skills.”

Writer-director Park Gyu-tae (“6/45” and “Bunt” were his) has a penchant for gonzo, or somethung approximating that in his comedies. This one is “out there” mostly in the sense that there’s no logic and characters spend a lot of time screaming.

Two of the three husbands are trying to get the third one back to his wife to free “their” wife and child. That involves a few throwdowns, and a lot of shouting.

The way the two dads summon up the strength to break out of bindings or smash down a walk-in freezer’s door is screaming at the top of their lungs before every fresh burst of effort.

“Husbands in Action” has Korean puns (the subtitling can’t keep up) and jokes and food references. But it’s not so much Korean as Asian, as the characters, situations and dialogue seems more suited to anime.

Bits about cops assuming their best detective skipping off with their prime suspect is a “genius” could have worked for more laughs.

The female roles — Jeon So-min plays a nosy reporter who stumbles into all this — are thinly scripted and show a lot of wasted potential. Maybe they’re saving that for the sequel.

I like the energy here, even if the pacing doesn’t match the sometimes manic behavior of the characters.

Because no matter how dumb, slackly paced and talky/shouty all of this is, it never really comes off. An almost-amusing chase, a funny (ish) brawl, a laugh here and a yawn there.

And let’s finish this review with a pet peeve. If you don’t speak Korean, Mandarin, Japanese, Vietnamese or what have you or aren’t immersed in the cinema of any of these cultures, figuring out who is playing what can be a puzzle.

If you’re reviewing a film like this, and Korean cinema has joined the Big Boys and Girls when it comes to movie-making, you need help discerning the credits.

The Internet Movie Database, decades ago, set out to order first and last names as they are in the culture that the filmmakers were born into. And as Korean surnames and those in some corners of Asia come first, that’s what they doggedly say they do, no matter what the filmmaker/actor uses as their billing, in the East and West.

IMDB claims they’ve made that a hard and fast “rule.” But it gives them as many fits as it does me. Check out how they bill the director of this film. And then the stars. I must run into this problem 100 times a year. You’d think as they transition to bots doing this “credits” work they’d be right or at least consistent. Nope. They’ve been driving me nuts with this forever.

Kids, nobody needs help making typos or committing cultural faux pas.

Rating: TV-MA, violence and profanity

Cast: Jin Seon-kyu, Gong Myung, Kang Ha-na, Kim Ji-seok, Jeon So-min and Yoon Kyong-ho.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Park Hyu-tae. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:47

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Series Review: Not Your Grandpa’s “Grand Tour”

Posted on September 6, 2026 by Roger Moore

The dropping of a new series of “The Grand Tour” held about as much interest for me as the announcement that the BBC is re-engineering “Top Gear” for another run, this time with a comedian/car-nut as its center.

It’s TV, remember. So British or not, you know all involved are thinking “youth movement.”

The rebooted “Grand Tour,” which is where the most celebrated “Top Gear” went when Jeremy Clarkson got fired and ended his and James May and Richard Hammond’s run of a series that began decades before them and continues after they left, throws three new strangers at the car review/car stunts/epic treks.

Old man Clarkson’s running “Clarkson’s Farm” and making bank for Amazon, thank you very much. Renaissance man James May is dabbling in travel shows and the like. And Richard Hammond, going grey and yet the youngest of those three — he’s 54 — is running a classic car restoration shop with a TV crew following him around.

The new guys are a personable, irritable Canadian youtube “car enthusiast,” Thomas Holland (38ish?), his “Throttle House” channel-mate James Engelsman (35), a Brit, and British engineer/nerd/trainspotting influencer Francis Bourgeois, the stage name of 26 year old Luke Nicholson.

If car culture and motoring enthusiasm is to have a future, the toothy, goofy, gawky Bourgeious is supposed to be its face, I guess? A little of him goes a long way, as he gives off this or that “Top Gear” replacement-who-didn’t-work-out vibes.

That’s one’s first take-away from this new series, which repeats “Top Gear” and “Grand Tour” gimmicks, takes us to a few new places — Malaysia and Malaysian drifting and car-decorating culture (think SoCal in the early 2000s), Pikes Peak for a race of tiny, underpowered but practical Japanese “Kei cars” — along the way.

Series reviewers have an unwritten code that says one must watch at least three episodes of a new show to review it, and even then you’re spitballing whether it’s going to work, who will rise to the top of the cast and if the chemistry will ever get there.

Series producers know that and make sure — no matter how pedestrian, derivative and blase the first two shows are — that the third episode is a winner.

That’s what happens here, as genre fans struggle to identify with this new trio, their forced bonhomie and their dental work. Even during Hammond’s “tooth whitening” days, we never saw this much toothy grinning from the old gits who used to get themselves in over their heads with this or that motorsports event or motoring predicament.

The third and fourth episodes send the new guys off to convince America that “smaller is better,” and all most any pickup owner will ever need is a 40-60hp Honda Acty or the like, all any sports car enthusiast needs is a Suzuki Alto. But Kei cars are undersized and road-illegal in much of the U.S. So getting from Wyoming to Pike’s Peak, Colorado, will take some lumber roads and 4×4 trails, and one amusing bit of business involved covering the cars with a three-sectioned school bus shell to disguise them on Colorado tourist town streets.

The engineer is the enthusiastic pedant, the Canadian quick tempered and quicker with a U.S. policing/Teslas aren’t selling “I wonder why?” crack and the second Brit is there because of well, birthright, I guess.

If this was an America-based series (they still refer to costs in pounds sterling, and horsepower in British “brake horsepower”), you’d have to have a Latin car culture representative among the drivers. Because if car culture has a present and future in the “Fast/Furious” U.S., it has a Spanish surname.

Some years back, for a magazine article on car collecting (the core audience of this sort of show), a successful dealer of restored classics told me men (mostly white) get into this in their late 50s and get out of it after ten years or so, on average.

That’s the “base” demographic these shows are pitched to. Most car repair/restoration shows skew “resto-mod” younger, and are just as dependent on “chararacters” as “The Grand Tour” and its “Top Gear” antecedent.

But as a guy keeping a 2003 Subaru Baja rustbucket going (fingers crossed) doing his own work on a ten year old Wolfsburg Edition Golf, I have to say that as I look out the window at my drought stricken, over-heated part of America — a short drive from Clarkson/May/Hammond’s beloved VIR — that my tolerance for shows mocking the need to get away from hydrocarbons is spent.

It went away with the dinosaurs who retired from “The Grand Tour.”

If you’re younger than that and still burning fuel and burning tires pretending to be oblivious to what that costs the planet, youtube is where you belong. Electric cars are the present and future.

Maybe the chemistry will click more than we can tell from the first season. Maybe younger viewers hunger for a perpetually-grinning peer who gushes “It’s got me by the underwear, and it’s giving me a BRUTAL wedgie!” We’ll see.

But the odd remark about how “anti-social” America’s mania for two times the size we actually need a pickup truck to be is (I test drove a kei truck or two, and these three have no IDEA what the damned things cost) doesn’t justify the need for a show that covers too much of the same ground as its many predecessors.

At least there’s a hint that maybe one or two of them know how to fix, on the fly, something that’s broken. That’s the way it’s edited, anyway.

It’s not your grandpa’s “Grand Tour.” Except it is. For now. Every “epic” trip, test, etc. through the first half dozen episodes is a Variation on a Theme by ‘Top Gear.'”

Adding the three elder statesmen to the show as gurus they visit doesn’t work. At all, “torch passing” be damned. Clarkson comes off as “contractually obligated.” May seems annoyed. Hammond can’t hide his dismay.

The “car porn” that “Top Gear” heralded and that producer/creator Andy Wilman perfected is still very much an addiction for some. But the bloom has gone off that rose, and when it’s hot enough and the bees are dead, it won’t be blooming again any time soon.

We’ll see if these three mesh, if their geeky juvenile Power Rangersish “Kei Team” chemistry comes to feel less forced. Will they manage a little conflict beyond the odd moment of competitiveness?

And we’ll see if they find enough new wrinkles in old car quests/car tests/car gimmicks that decades of “Top Gear” and “Grand Tour” seasons trotted out to make the show a draw.

But it’s not just Clarkson and May and people their age who’re pretty sure the time for all that has passed.

Hammond? He could’ve starred in this updating. He’s still got the teeth for it.

Rating: TV-14, a bit of swearing, wot wot?

Cast: James Engelsman, Thomas Holland and Francis Bourgeois, with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammon and James May.

Credits: Created by Andy Wilman, scripted by Sam Philip. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: episodes six @ :55 minutes each

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BOX OFFICE: “Spider-Man” approaches All Time Record, “Odyssey” Clears a $Billion, “By Any Means” cracks Top Five

Posted on September 5, 2026 by Roger Moore

Labor Day Weekend is both a four-day weekend, and the “last weekend of summer” as far as the movies go.

So all the $numbers piled up and reported here will be for the four days of the first moviegoing weekend of September.

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” devoured the summer of ’26, and adding another $23 million (per Deadline.com) which puts it within reach of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” as the all time “domestic” (North America) box office champ.

“Force Awakens” earned $936 million pre-Trumpflation bucks back in 2015, in North America alone. “Brand New Day” will be over the $920 million mark by midnight Monday.

But the movie’s box office take is slacking off enough to notice. It’s losing some weekdays to “The Odyssey,” which just cleared the $1 billion mark, only that’s the worldwide take of Christopher Nolan’s greatest hit. With an additional $17.2 million helping it close in on $1.6 billion, domestic and worldwide.

And thanks to Trumpflation, there’s a chance this summer could have another claim to the record books. That all-time summer season record is $4.756 million. We won’t know until probably Tuesday AM, Monday night at the earliest.

“Coyote vs. Acme,” the movie Warner Bros. didn’t want to release, will add another $13 million over this four day holiday. That gives Ketchup Entertainment a prayer of earning back its $50 million purchase of the WB’s much more expensive than that cast-off. It’s over $35 and may clear $50 before September is done, making any post-theatrical sale to streaming something close to pure profit.

Smart, Ketchup. Very smart.

“By Any Means” proves Mark Wahlberg still has an audience, even if it’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II‘s movie, as far as leading man goes. It’s earning mixed to negative reviews across the board but will collect over $9 million to come in fourth.

“Insidious: Out of the Further” keeps cashing in, with another $8.1 million (four day) weekend, good enough for fifth place.

Sixth place was taken by Disney/Pixar’s “Cars” re-release — a twenty year old film whose first fans are taking their children to see it — adding $7.6 million over four dars.

“Cars” struck me at the time as the first misstep Pixar made, a franchise launched by a studio that manufactured good reviews by cherry picking who got the “first look” at it. They built a whole, soulless franchise out of that, with “Planes” and increasingly crappy toy-sales-oriented pictures.

But rediscovering the found-money in re-releasing old titles could discourage Disney’s out-of-ideas/let’s remake-everything ethos (“Moana” was a warning shot). So “Cars” selling nearly a million tickets isn’t a bad thing.

Saban’s “Buddy” rolled up $7.2 million — seventh place.

“Paw Patrol: Dino Movie” did $4.45 million to take eighth.

Ridley Scott’s dog “The Dog Stars” fell off a cliff and only earned ninth place $3.4 million honors.

A re-release of the seminal “Akira” he did $3.23 million, giving the thirty-eight year old film tenth place.

I was going to stick around for A24’s “Onslaught” after catching “By Any Means.” But end of summer sci-fi — genetic soldiers, Dan Stevens and what not — is rarely anything worth sitting in a theater with. Weak reviews and a $2.3 million take won’t have anybody popping champagne corks at the distributor’s closed-for-the-holiday-weekend offices.

It didn’t crack the top ten, nor did “Fall 2: Deadpoint,” ($2.87) another dangling from very-high-places thriller from the makers of “Fall.”

That leaves “End of Oak Street,” “Mutiny,” “Tony,” “Spa Weekend” and out of the top ten this week as summer shifts to fall starting next week.

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Movie Review: Eyes Off the Prize? Civil Rights Justice “By Any Means”

Posted on September 5, 2026 by Roger Moore

The all-too-human lust for vengeance collides with the faint hope for justice in “By Any Means,” a Civil Rights thriller set in the “Mississippi Burning” timeline.

It’s a violent “true enough for Hollywood” tale of torture and summary executions in pursuit of Mississippi racists who murdered a civil rights leader.

What director Elegance Bratton (“The Inspection”) was shooting for was an upending of the “white savior” trope that films since before “To Kill a Mockingbird” and after “Mississippi Burning” have leaned on.

uppose your “white savior” is a pitiless, amoral and murderous mobster?

But the film’s script (by Sascha Penn, a producer who wrote “Creed II” among other credits) forgets to give us a villain, leaving us a vague “They’re all guilty” parade of colorless, stupid, white supremacist rednecks.

And Bratton and Penn drain most of the pathos out of the deaths of a couple of civil rights figures played by the formidable Giancarlo Esposito and LisaGay Hamilton.

Two years after the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murders that were the basis for “Mississippi Burning,” and things are no better in the “Segretation now, segregation forever” Deep South. The F.B.I., a little more integrated since that notorious case, is embedded there and getting nowhere.

Special Agent Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Matteen II, “Manta” in an “Aquaman,” a mainstay of TV’s “The Get Down”) has returned to his native Mississippi for a chance to make a difference, only to be consigned to the filing department archives.

But his bosses (David Strathairn and Josh Lucas) change their tune with D.C. higher-ups decide to bring back a “no rules” thug who helped them crack the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murder case by breaking some heads.

Gregory Scarpa (Mark Walhberg, at his most ripped) is only referred to by name in the closing credits. He’s a notorious piece of F.B.I. civil rights era lore (the Bureau denies hiring this killer) who loomed in the background of “Mississippi Burning.” You’ve got your guy and he won’t confess? Mr. “Uniquely Qualified” for this sort of work, Mr. “I HAVE no rules” is your man.

He’ll beat confessions, get bloodied torture subjects to name names, and bust up the murderous KKK and its various “white citizens’ councils” one broken man or dead body at a time.

Wahlberg plays the guy as almost irresistably loathesome, a monster with a family of five he cheats on, and leaves behind in Bensonhurst, blackmailed (he’s a mob informant) into heading back South and doing what he does.

Strider? “You’re to be his handler.”

A “buddy” picture is in the making, with Strider reluctant to try and “explain racism to someone like you” as Mr. Colombo Crime Family expresses disdain for Martin Luther King, Jr., and a preference for “that other guy, Malcolm.”

You know, the one who decided passive resistance against racist oppressors was too slow when winning equal rights and treatment under the law “by any means necessary” seemed like the quicker, if more violent way to go.

The movie’s glib and muted in its impact, right from the start. Screenwriter Penn makes the bickering cliched and the actors do nothing to stop him.

Having our mobster try to convince our “colored” agent to see things his way? No and then “yes” happen so close together it’s a wonder Mateen didn’t give himself the same whiplash the movie gives viewers. Of course it has something to do with “they came after my WIFE” (Nicole Beharie).

A racist, threatening Alabama highway patrolman gets it and all Scarpa wants is a “Thank-you.” Well, not exactly. Our screenwriter throws in “Can I get a smile?” to try and get a laugh.

Walhberg plays to the audience as he tortures this or that hapless, tables-turned oppressor.

“There’s a point where everybody talks,” he tells his victims. Former child actor Ethan Embry is the most recognizable member of the Hattiesburg, Mississippi KKK lynch mob.

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Movie Review: Godawful Gal can’t get “The Runner” up to Speed

Posted on September 3, 2026 by Roger Moore

The star is generally too easy a target when you’re looking for the ways a movie goes wrong.

So if we’re cutting Gal Gadot any slack at all for the debacle that “The Runner” turned out to be, let’s zero in on screenwriter Mark Gibson, who scripted um, “Snow Dogs,” the animated also-ran “The Wild” and nothing of any note at all starring flesh and blood humans.

Director and Bob Marley-fan pal Kevin Macdonald did “The Last King of Scotland,” “The Mauritanian” and terrific documentaries about Marley, Whitney Houston and others. If this pavement-pounding piffle has any pace or pulse at all, credit him.

Gadot? She stars as a dogged prosecutor and single mom whose son is kidnapped to coerce her into killing her star witness at a big mob trial.

She’s convincing as a lithe, athletic jogger who finishes off every phone call with “I’ve gotta run.” We can believe she’d be a willing trigger-woman.

But as a mother desperate to save her child, she’s about as empathetic as a shark. More to the point, whatever compelling touches the screenplay adds to the character — thinly-fictionalized touches of Charlize Theron’s real life background — Gadot fails on most every level in making her or her plight all that interesting.

Maia drops her clingy son (Rory Wilmot) off at his London school on the opening day of her big trial prosecuting a London mob leader for murder. Then she’s off on her morning run.

She and the viewer are utterly beaten about the ears with a parade of digitally-distracted pedestrians, bystanders, drivers and passengers, conversing on phones, swapping sexy texts, doom scrolling or distracting themselves with TikTok.

That’s the big subtext of the movie, our “devices” have disconnected us. Yawn.

A lawyer lady can’t even run with her Bluetooth ear buds without getting scam calls telling her she’s “already won.”

But one caller isn’t is scammer with a South Asian accent. “I have your son,” he purrs. Apparently, her fraidy-cat kid just wandered off with the first strange man (Damien Lewis, “Band of Brothers”) to offer him ice cream.

“Just think of me as a force for change.”

What she has to do to free her diabetic child is run across town to the hotel where Scotland Yard is guarding her star witness, take a gun the kidnapper’s put in her son’s backpack — which he hid in a dumpster — and gun down the mob turncoat.

The mostly-unseen stranger (we can see Lewis’s chin and hear his distinct voice), with the cliched world-of-tech screens and gadgets at EveryVillain’s disposal, knows all about competitive, can-do “killer” Maia. He can control her phone, AI mimic her voice to ward off work and school calls, and deep dive into her bikini or underwear-clad laptop photos just to show he means business.

What CAN Maia do, on the run through parks, crowded streets, along the river and canals, into The Tube, unable to call or even accost cops or strangers with her plight as our kidnapper keeps her line open and hears and tracks her every move.

Gadot’s Maiia will steal a cell phone — several — in an effort to reach out for help. She’ll outrun owners of various ages, have her own phone stolen, get violent and be chased by London’s finest for that.

The picture does a piss-poor job of maintaining the “ticking clock” element of this ticking clock thriller. The child in jeopardy is an underdeveloped plot point, as diabetic shock and diabetic coma are introduced and underplayed.

But the real failing here is in getting across our heroine’s breathless desperation and letting us follow along as she works the problem. The first is Gadot’s failing, and the second a scripted shortcoming that the director doesn’t fix.

It’s a bold thriller these days that allows a kid or the parent trying to save them die. Suffice it to say “bold” doesn’t figure in here. Showing us the far-fetched “solutions” to how what happens happens after the fact is always a cheat, and it isn’t well-handled here. At all.

“The Runner” might have merited a theatrical release, at least in someone’s eyes, at some point in the production process. But this script needed work, and if Ana de Armas or Leticia Wright weren’t available, plainly they should have kept casting until they found somebody with the warmth and mania necessary to convey a mother’s love for and then panic over the kidnapping of her darling boy.

Rating: PG-13, violence, profanity

Cast: Gal Gadot, Damien Lewis, Rory Wilmot and Alfred Enoch

Credits: Directed by Kevin Macdonald, scripted by Mark Gibson. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:25

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Movie Review: Ryan R. and Kenneth B. gun for “Top Gun” — “Mayday”

Posted on September 2, 2026 by Roger Moore

Let’s go with “adorably awful,” because “delightfully dumb” seems like a stretch.

“Mayday” is a pseudo-serious send-up of “Top Gun” starring two guys who should know better, but whose way with a punch line ensures it’ll at least serve up a few laughs.

Ryan Reynolds plays a hotshot 1980s Navy fighter pilot shot down “Behind Enemy Lines” who requires the help of an ex-KGB agent (Kenneth Branagh) gone Grizzly Adams, holed up in the wilderness, to get out.

They have many brawls and shootouts and narrow escapes in this action comedy.

When I first glanced at the ads for this Apple TV release, I thought they’d paired up RR with Zach Galifianakis, Look at that photo and tell me I’m seeing things.

I mean, come on.

We meet the hotshot pilot named Troy whose call sign is “Assassin” as he’s helping a fellow pilot get his F-18 on the deck of their carrier in the most outlandish or at least implausible means possible.

That puts Troy in line to fly in the second seat on an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. No training or anything, he’s just plopped into the “black ops mission” jet and flown over the Soviet Union to photograph some new missile silos.

The pilot is killed when they’re shot down, and Troy is injured. But when he wakes up — to the sight of a Tom Cruise in “Top Gun” poster — he discovers he’s been saved by a big-bearded, half-ass-accented Ivan (actually Nikolai, “Call me NEEEEeek!”) who loves all things American — Springsteen and “Top Gun” especially.

Nikolai will help the out-of-his-depth Americanski escape, but not until “the Cold War is over.” Sure, Gorbachev’s in power and he and chickenhawk Reagan are talking. But Troy bolts free to try and call the AMERICAN EMBASSY from a Russkie roadhouse. That…doesn’t go well.

And so on.

This two-hander — with Marcin Doracinski as the KGB chief hunting them, Maria Bakalova as “the daughter” and David Morse as the sickly ex-shipbuilder dad “back home” — borrows from the titles mentioned above, “Top Gun” and “Behind Enemy Lines,” and also the Eastwood Soviet era thriller “Firefox.”

But co-writers/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (they did the latest “Dungeons and Dragons” and also “Game Night”) are more interested in finding laughs than fretting over plot points.

The running gags start with “Top Gun” references and Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” LP — on cassette, of course.

The punchlines are peppered with “ride into the danger zone” jokes and “Red Roof Inn” references. Not really side splitters, but the fights are fun and there are sight gags in the finale that will make your jaw drop before the guffaw comes out.

Just remember, the title has two meanings and Reynolds turns 50 in October and Branagh is 65 and no Liam Neeson, so it’s all kind of a stunt man/makeup team/CGI assisted lark.

And “dumb” becomes a given, right from the start.

Rating: PG-13, violence, some profanity

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh, Maria Bakalova, Donald Sales, Wendy Crewson and David Morse.

Credits: Scripted and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:50

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Series Redux — “Saturday Night Live,” the First Season

Posted on September 2, 2026 by Roger Moore

I’ve been thinking a lot of late about Martin Short’s assertion — in Lawrence Kasdan’s “Life is Short” documentary — that “80 percent of comedy” fails, and the fact that he wasn’t talking just about his own efforts in landing laughs.

It pops into my head every time I watch a “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” re-run that doesn’t work. We remember classic bits of wordplay, history mocking “Spanish Inquistion” sketches, roundtable discussions with Marx, Mao, et. al. that devolve into an English football quiz show, dead parrots and silly songs and sillier walks. But it’s fair to say that as much as 80 percent of that legendary series wasn’t all that. And a lot of what they were performing was recycled from earlier shows the assorted Pythons appeared on and wrote for.

A whole season of “Python” flirted with being a complete washout, as did bits, sketches and episodes all along the way.

The news that Netflix has picked up the old episodes of Canada’s zany and ever-so-Canadian “SCTV” promises more reinforcement of former ensemble member Short’s maxim. Iconic in status and beloved, it was a meaner show, I always thought — with showbiz riffs, hockey hosers, polka band goofs and a whole lot of written and re-written, rehearsed and recorded on tape bits that still tickle, or still bomb. I’ll have to dig back into that to see if Guy Cabellero has aged better than I expected.

But the first season of the Canadian-pitched and packed “Saturday Night Live” — along with many other seasons — is on Amazon streaming, and I’ve killed a lot of the dog days of summer rewatching that seat-of-the-pants “live” comedy series’ debut year.

“Eighty percent failure” seems about right, no matter how much nervous tittering the in-studio audience did in response to hosts who bombed, sketches that struggled and characters that didn’t land.

The feature film “Saturday Night” did a grand job of taking us back to the first episode and the manic production of it that managed to fill 90 minutes of airtime way back in 1975. Bits of that premiere worked, as did concepts that were trotted out for the first time. But a lot of what they tried lands with a thud, especially now.

“Weekend Update” looked slapdash and only Chevy Chase’s mugging and low laughs — faking the voices of voice-over “correspondants” to make the “newscast” was everywhere covering everything — put it over that first season.

That, and “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is…still dead” gags.

George Carlin struggled so much doing his stand up in a few segments as that first host that he swatted the under-reacting studio audience with a “Heard this material before?” shot.

Rewatching the episode confirms the insincts of “Saturday Night,” the movie. The Muppets didn’t work and didn’t really fit all the way through that first season. When all else fails, drug jokes and sex jokes are your lifelines. Chase was destined for instant stardom. But Billy Preston showed up and kind of saved opening night.

And that set the tone for the rest of the season.

Paul Simon hosted an episode that had entirely too much music to be a hoot.

The cast was finding its voice and introducing characters — Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella, Chase’s clumsy Gerald Ford, Land Shark, John Belushi’s Samurai and Joe Cocker impression, Dan Aykroyd‘s series of motor-mouthed pitchmen, experts, sleazeballs and presidential candidate Jimmy Carter.

Were the assorted “killer bee” costumed bits ever all that?

The world and “SNL” discovered Candice Bergen‘s funnybone as the show only really found its footing the first time she hosted. They almost immediately brought her back for the Christmas show.

Rob Reiner (with then-wife Penny Marshall) turned out to fit in. Robert Klein should have been a no brainer, but his turn as host struggled.

They didn’t know what to do with Dick Cavett, Ford White House insider Ron Nessen (with Gerald Ford himself introducing the show), Dyan Cannon, Desi Arnaz senior or junior, Raquel Welch or Buck Henry, even though they gave Buck many more hosting chances, seeing how well his old, square but pervy persona contrasted with the writers’ drugs, sex and rock’n roll fixation.

There’s little that’s memorable about famed British comics Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore’s outing, either. They did sketches from their then-current show on Broadway, which play as dated now.

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Classic Film Review: Hello, Dolly — “9 to 5” becomes a Clarion Call for Working Women

Posted on September 1, 2026 by Roger Moore

You know and I know the title song “9 to 5” was always better than the movie “9 to 5,” right?

Memory can fix a “classic” film’s failings, and this one — a big, touched-a-nerve hit when it premiered in 1980 — lumbers along for a solid 70 minutes (out of a bloated 109 minute running time) before getting around to what it’s really about.

The slapstick and cutting remark comebacks produce highlights that stand out in one’s mind.

“I’ll tell you one thing. If you ever say another word about me or make another indecent proposal, I’m gonna get that gun of mine… And I’m gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot!

The leading lady trio that ran the show sparkled, with Lily Tomlin doing the heavy lifting, Jane Fonda channeling her dizzy, retro “Barefoot in the Park” past as a house wife dumped for a younger woman and Dolly Parton making her screen debut with a heaping helping of country sunshine and sass. Dabney Coleman, at his most sexist and dastardly, was the perfect villain. You could believe this version of The Boss as bully — limited, potentially violent, promoted by a sexist ol’boy’s network culture, willing to steal credit for others’ ideas and looking down on women as inferior.

One remembers every good moment set to its syncopated, perfectly-crafted jewel of a title song, written by Dolly and nominated for an Oscar, even though it’s really only in the opening and closing credits.

“9 to 5” earned over $100 million in an era when movies rarely did that, especially movies without Luke Skywalker or Superman in them, and as I recall, it was a genuine crowd pleaser and really played with live audiences.

Fonda plays Judy, the newly-dumped new hire at a big corporation housed in a city high rise. Tomlin plays the boss’s “right arm,” Violet, the sharp and hyper-competent fixer who makes the trains run on time, even as mediocre men are promoted above her.

And Parton, who passed away as one of the most beloved figures American pop culture has ever produced last month, plays Doralee, the boss’s lusted-after secretary. She drawls. She drives to work in a Chevy Luv, the tiniest pickup truck of the day. Oh, and she keeps a pistol in her purse.

Dolly’s role is meant to be the scene stealer, and the petite Smokey Mountain blonde delivers. When an accident at work forces the three women to team up against hated boss Franklin (Coleman), Doralee’s the one who hog-ties the creep and waves her pistol in his face like she means business.

And when they’re at a loss about what to do to extricate themselves from kidnapping and attempted murder charges, she’s the one who makes the most sense and lands the movie’s biggest laugh.

“Well, I say we hire a couple’a wranglers to go upstairs and beat the s–t outta him!”

The movie’s other comic highlights are provided by Coleman, blustering, cussing and threatening even after he’s amusingly trussed up in a getup designed to keep him from escaping from his house — for a month. Yes, he did his own stunts (hoisted by his own petard, via a garage door opener), and Coleman made damned sure he play that physical shtick land.

God knows how he must have hated re-takes.

I was but a college radio station critic when this picture premiered, and remember feeling it was better at messaging — with the boss in lock-down, the women liberate their workplace — than at delivering laughs.

As a director (“Foul Play,””The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”), Colin Higgins was always better appreciated as the writer of “Harold and Maude,” “Silver Streak” and “Foul Play.” The originating writer of this workplace comedy was Patricia Resnick, who wrote Robert Altman’s “comeback” classic “The Player.” Higgins rewrote her script, but he didn’t write, shoot or edit it for pace.

He’d only direct four films, and none of them lost money. But his career and life were shortened by AIDS.

What’s a bit jaw-dropping about “9 to 5” now is the hot button issues it brings up in an America in the process of failing to pass the Equal Rights Amendment are still with us. Turning the movie into a TV series didn’t change American politics.

Equal pay for equal work? “Job sharing?” A workplace-provided daycare is still the Holy Grail in a culture that refuses to address that most basic “right” as the people who fight all these changes the hardest try to figure out ways to force women to have more children.

So the film is more of a “feminist classic” than a comedy for the ages. It’s still a classic, even if its greatest pleasure these days is in breaking down that title tune as you hear it on the soundtrack — the workplace timeclock ticking rhythm, the compact storytelling in every phrase and Dolly’s triumphant performance of what still feels, well, revolutionary 46 years after she composed it.

“‘9 to 5,’ yeah, they got you where they want you
There’s a better life and you think about it, don’t you?
It’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call it
And you spend your life puttin’ money in his wallet.”

Rating: PG, a little violence, a smattering of profanity

Cast: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, Dabney Coleman and Sterling Hayden.

Credits: Directed by Colin Higgins, scripted by Patricia Resnick and Colin Higgins. A 20th Century Fox film now on Netflix, other streamers

Running time: 1:49

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