Movie Review — “Pope Francis: A Man of His Word”

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There’s a twinkle to Jorge Mario Bergoglio, known to the world as Pope Francis. His crinkly grin reminds me of the British actor Jonathan Pryce, when Pryce isn’t portraying a Bond villain.

Something about that smile smacks of utter sincerity, a modest, soft-spoken man of genuine humility and an eye for the perfect gesture. That explains at least some of his adorable appeal, because he’s not the most dynamic preacher of speaker.

But as the new documentary, “Pope Francis: A Man  of His Word” makes clear, it’s not how he says things but the things he says and does that matter. When he visits a favela, pressing the flesh with Brazil’s poorest of the poor, when he’s comforting children in a hospital in the Central African Republic, when he’s wading into the rainy Philippines on the heels of a typhoon to comfort victims, or when he’s gently hectoring the U.N. or the U.S. Congress about “the globalization of indifference, he’s leading the world by example. He’s walking in the shoes of his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi.

That’s the angle director Wim Wenders (“Wings of Desire”) takes with this film, started by others but finished and narrated by him. Wenders illustrates the life of St. Francis in silent black and white footage, “flashbacks” to show why this pope chose that saint, champion of the poor, the young, the flora and fauna of the Earth itself, as his namesake.

“A Man of His Word” is most impressive in showing the pope’s appeal, not just in huge rallies all over the world, but in a prison in Philadelphia, among refugees who brave death as sea to cross to Greece or Italy.  See him wash the feet of the least among us, inmates or those trapped in lives of poverty, and tell me you’re not moved.

Wenders plainly was, and uses the cameras at events, large scale and small, to show us faces — beatific in their faith, or questioning what they see (in Israel, Egypt and elsewhere) — people of all creeds impressed by the anti-imperial example this simple priest from Argentina sets.

I can’t speak for all non-Catholics, but there is a certain hope that any new pope has the Hippocratic Oath in the back of his mind — “First, do no harm.”

The most recent egregious harm inflicted by the church, and blowing back onto the to the church’s image, is the worldwide priest sex abuse scandals. Francis addresses this with a firm “Zero tolerance” promise to punish the “betrayal” pedophile priests committed. He bluntly but gently counters a question at an Italian press conference about “the Gay Lobby,” with “Who am I to judge?” That Jesus thing about “loving everybody” is the only church dogma Francis never disavows.

The toughest questions he faces are in Q & As with workers, the poor and school children. In interviews with the filmmakers, Francis speaks directly to the camera about these issues, global inequality, the worldwide refugee crisis and the three “T’s” of his message (in Spanish and Italian and occasionally English, with subtitles).

“Trabajo (work), tierra (land) and techo (a roof over one’s head)” is what he’s after. Reduce poverty, redistribute wealth, remember that “we are all brothers, whether we like it or not.”

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His messages may resonate, but as I mentioned, he’s not a dynamic speaker or dazzling screen presence. His charisma isn’t just conferred by his position, but it mostly is.

Wenders limits the film by not having many other voices (just a nun who remembers his days in Argentina), and by narrating it in his somnambulist drone of a German-accented voice.

You don’t feel Francis is challenged on anything here, and as lightly charming and impressive as he and this almost-all-access documentary is, one can only imagine what the great doc-makers — Errol Morris or Werner Herzog or Barbara Koppel — could have done with this.

The jury’s still out on his papacy, and in a world spiraling into nativism, fascism and conflict, his “Jesus was a revolutionary” message has yet to stem the tide of intolerance or part Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk from their billions. But Wenders and this thought-provoking but borderline hagiography documentary may be right, that given time, this modern day incarnation of St. Francis may touch lives and change the world.

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MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Pope Francis, John Kerry, Barack Obama, narrated by Wim Wendewrs

Credits: Written and directed by Wim Wenders. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:36

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RIP Margot Kidder: 1948-2018, “Superman” Lois Lane was 69

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Margot Kidder, Lois Lane to Christopher Reeve’s Man of Steel in the most beloved film version of “Superman,” has died. She was just 69 and had been in poor health for years.

Stories of paranoia, bipolar disorder and mental illness dominated her later years. She kept working, popping up in a “Halloween” sequel here, an indie project there, right up to the end. She was on the cusp of a breakdown when her old “Superman” director gave her a life-saving bit part in “Maverick” in the early ’90s.

The Canadian-born Kidder’s heydays were the ’70s, when she was “Superman/Amityville Horror” famous and part of that whole Montana mafia of actors, singers (Jimmy Buffett) and writers, like Thomas McGuane, to whom she was briefly married.

In the “Superman” movies, she was the very embodiment of ’70s liberated woman, assertive, spunky, competitive and very much an adult. You don’t see Lois Lanes like that, and you don’t see a lot of supporting roles for women that have that much going on. Yeah, she needed rescuing. Or so Superman always thought.

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She played painter Georgia O’Keeffe opposite Stacy Keach’s photographer Alfred Stieglitz in a stage drama, “Flowers and Photos,” about their love affair in a 1990s play that was launched in Winston-Salem, N.C., where I then worked.

I recall her being charming, a good sport, and pretty good in the play as well. She held her own with Keach, widely regarded as one of the great stage actors of his generation and an under-rated character actor par excellence even today.

My dog kept interrupting a phone interview we had before meeting in person. Her dog barked back, and she said “Goodness, maybe we should just turn over the phone to them.”

A lifelong actress and activist (she became a U.S. citizen about a dozen years ago), she died in Livingston, Montana where she’d long made her home. She died in an assisted living home, in her sleep, according to her management.

 

 

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Netflixable? Music’s ties to drugs, drink and early Death is explored in “27: Gone Too Soon”

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Here’s a British music documentary ostensibly about “The 27 Club,” that collection of famous musicians, from Brian Jones to Amy Winehouse and ever-onward, who indulged and died at the too-too young age of 27.

I say “ostensibly” because Simon Napier-Bell’s “27: Gone Too Soon” takes a stab at going much deeper into the reasons people like Kurt Cobain killed himself, and Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin drank and drugged themselves to death.

The flippant “conspiracy” title of that “Club” is just a jumping off point for discussions of “drink, drugs and depression,” disturbed musicians in a field of music where “If you haven’t made it by 27, you’ll never make it.”

Historians, music business professionals and British rock journalists like Lesley-Ann Jones and musicians revisit the ’60s, when this “club” seemed to go public (musicians dying too young predates that decade by many decades).

“Being a pop star is a very dangerous business,” one and all agree with survivors like Gary Numan. Throw in childhood trauma, “drama” within the dynamics of a group or a music scene, press scrutiny and fragile egos with an absurdly easy access to indulgences and the growing expectations of “living the lifestyle,” it’s a wonder anybody in that line of work who achieves fame gets out alive.

“Suddenly, you’re in a bedroom on your own. What do you do?”

These are people who equally “suddenly, can afford every vice.”

The music people place the subjects of the film within music history, the milieu these fabled figures lived and died in, but mental health professionals do a better job (than the speculations of music journalists and TV presenters) in laying out the personalities and backgrounds that built self-destruction into their short life stories.

Brian Jones is remembered as a guy from whom the Rolling Stones stole his band, his style (Jagger) and vibe (Richards) and his psyche, only to drown blitzed out of his mind in the pool at the house he owned where A.A. Milne (“Winnie the Pooh”) had once lived.

Jimi Hendrix had an upbringing “that was BEYOND Dickensian,” the experts interviewed here relate. Mom was “a child having a child,” a sister was born blind, from there into the military and into seriously regimented R & B bands.

Psychologist Martin Lloyd-Elliot sees Jimi’s search for “freedom” in his music, his love life and life in general as being the secret to his genius and his undoing. He weighs in “the layer of skin missing” from so many artists, fragile souls like Janis Joplin. Dr. Cosmo Hallstrom notes the speed of Jimi’s arrival, the rapid loss of grounding from his changing circle of friends as being “his rapid undoing.”

The “Swinging London” footage is vivid and fascinating. The Deep South Janis Joplin grew up in and the heroin-dosed London of Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain’s marriage to the Ultimate Enabler is skipped past. But not  “the trauma that runs through” his family’s genetics. And Amy Winehouse’s relationship with her grotesque, cheating/enabling father isn’t similarly spared. Courtney Love is more litigious, right?

Janis Joplin, “tormented,” “once voted the ugliest man on campus,” was self-medicating from an early age, and clumsily overdosed, those around her have maintained.

One thing about the historical stuff, we’re reminded that “no one talked about ‘addiction,’ ‘rehab'” and these early deaths as being survivable with “intervention,” another buzz-word more popular now than way back when. “Dazed” radio and TV interviews underline her alcoholism.

I was a taken aback by old TV news footage starring the late ABC anchor Frank Reynolds, glibly leading an obituary with “The Jimi Hendrix Experience is over.”  Damn. That’s cold. Diane Sawyer’s sensitive announcement on that same network decades later when Cobain died shows an erosion of the generation gap that is encouraging.

The documentary rattles through these assorted case histories, where Kurt et al fits within music history, unhappiness and death, so briskly that it at times feels TV quick and dirty in style, almost flippant.

Amy Winehouse, whose record label went to some lengths to save, did herself in anyway, and it’s worth arguing that “There’s some investment in chaos” in this business, that people like her thrive until they don’t.

But there’s new material here, arguments and counter-narratives that in light of the recent revelations about Robin William’s physical maladies that led to his suicide, make it all a little less coincidental, a little less mysterious.

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MPAA Rating: unrated, drug abuse, adult subject matter.

Cast: Gary Numan, Lesley Ann Jones, Paul Gambuccini, Tom Robinson, Steve Blame, Dan Gillespie Sells

Credits: Written and directed by Simon Napier-Bell. A Vision Films release.

Running time: 1:10

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Netflixable? “Security” gives us Banderas back in action mode

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Have you been watching season two of “Genius,” the National Geographic TV mini-series built on Antonio Banderas‘s superb rendition of Pablo Picasso? Yeah, he’s too tall, but the Spanish master brilliantly portrays pugnacious, egotistical and short in playing another Spanish master.

Every time I see Banderas, I wonder why Hollywood and European cinema haven’t made better use of him.

I mean, if Tarantino can resurrect the acting dead, if George Lucas had the good sense to bring Billy Dee Williams into the “Star Wars” universe, surely somebody has a great idea or three of how to use the smoldering Spanish hunk with the best growl in the movies.

B-movies like “Acts of Vengeance” and “Bullet Head” aren’t so much released as “escape,” even if they’re worth tracking down.

“Security” is the sort of film we’re seeing Banderas in too often these days, a heavyweight punching below his weight.

He plays a military vet — a retired captain — in search of a job doing “anything” after a life in the service.

“We just don’t have anything in your skill set, at the moment.”

Divorced, “my wife and my kid are two states away,” broke and driving a beater, Eduardo “Eddie” Deacon cannot get a break. Minimum wage security jobs are all that’s available to a guy who off his “psyche eval clearance” box on employment applications.

“Just an oversight, I’m sure.”

When a U.S. Marshals witness transport is attacked, you can bet your B-movie dollars tat the bad guys will end up crossing paths with ol’Eddie, his “special skills” and any problems that “psyche eval” might have revealed.

It all goes down at the mall, where Eddie’s an after-hours “mall cop,” flinching at the sound of the thunderstorm outside, trying to fit in with dorky dead-enders who share the job, ignoring the pretty Ruby (Gabriella Wright) who sleeps through the shift and collects a check — for being pretty — trying not to laugh when idiotic-hairstyle boss Vance (Liam McIntyre) waves around the taser that is their only armament.

Five man night crew for a mall? Hmmm, Eddie wonders. As do we. “A whole lotta meth” is the explanation.

And then the missing “witness,” a tweenage girl, Jamie (Katherine De La Rocha) shows up, hysterical, at their padlocked glass doors. Followed by kindly old Ben Kingsley, looking for his “daughter.”

Suspicious Eddie is not having it. And soon, the mall crew is up to its eyeballs in bribe offers and heavily armed gangsters.

“You getting rich, or every last one of you dying horribly.” Quite the choice.

Eddie makes the call, and “Your country thanks you for your service.”

Bad guys in trenchcoats flood the zone, “not in-bred mouth-breathers,” Boss Ben insists. This remote mall is about to turn into a combat zone.

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“For now, time is our enemy,” Eddie purrs. “Let’s make time our friend.

Let’s raid mall stores and fortify this beast like a “Braveheart” castle. One improbable to impossible “escape” follows another.

The kid? She’s testy, streetwise and annoying.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child. One more thing, you have to promise to protect me. Pinky swear!”

Kingsley stands very still, looks very stern and bites off chewy orders to his merciless minions.

“Get it cleaned up.” “Clear the food court.” “Scorched Earth. Nobody gets out alive.”

Ruby? She wakes up.

The good guys “buy time” retreating from store to store, level to level, “hurt them, if you have the chance.”

Banderas commits to the part, as always. Eddie gets a few bad-ass moments, takes a few beatings. And yet, he persists.

Yeah, this is a little too R-rated “Mall Cop” for its own good. The mall as combat zone set up is fun, the DIY booby-traps and “bombs” have just enough “MacGuyver” about them to hold our attention. And the leads are old hands at keeping that sense of urgency in their moments even if the director doesn’t share that “We’re running out of time” tension with the rest of the shuffling along baddies.

Aside from that, “Security” is just an illogical, cheesy and bullet-riddled B-movie, even in its best moments. You can see why it merited little if any theatrical release.

What you can’t see is why Banderas, and let’s throw in Kingsley, can’t find more meaningful work than this, or better investment advisors who’d allow them to turn down a job, every now and then.

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MPAA Rating: R for violence and language

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Ben Kingsley, Katherine de la Rocha, Jiro Wang, Cung Le, Liam McIntyre, Gabriella Wright

Credits:Directed by Alain Desrochers, script by Tony Mosher. A Millenium release.

Running time: 1:31

 

 

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Next Screening, My Audience with His Holiness (“Pope Francis — A Man of His Word”)

It opens Friday, and the Pope Picture has Focus Features behind it and Wim Wenders behind the camera — who’s had a fascinating career ranging from “Wings of Desire” and “The American Friend” to U-2 concert films and too many documentaries to name here. Wildly uneven and fascinating career, I might add. But the docs of his that I’ve seen have been as a general rule, terrific.

“Pope Francis — A Man of His Word” promises to capture the pope, not in candid/private moments so much as in the persona and example he tries to set for the Catholic and non-Catholic world.

Granted, Turkish tyrant Erdogan is in it and PermaTan John Boehner.

But the Pope himself seems a modest man, compelling figure. Should be an illuminating film, maybe even uplifting.

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“Deadpool 2” reviews are coming, tonight at 11

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Yes, there is fangirl/fanboy reaction trickling in about “Deadpool 2,” which was screened all over North America last Thursday.

Ignore their nerdgasms or criticisms just a tad longer, if you would.

Official, grownup licensed (not really) critic reviews don’t arrive until 11 tonight. That’s when the Fox/Marvel embargo ends. For those of us with licenses (sorry, not a real thing).

For perspective, though, let me play the Elder Statesman of Cinema Criticism here and point out one other time this was done.

It was the spring of 2006, kids. America and the world were reveling in the wit and clumsiness of the Bush Presidency, year five, the Tigers and the Cardinals were slowly clawing their way towards a World Series date in October.

And Sony was about to unleash “The Da Vinci Code.” But they were showing it at Cannes, too. That self-same warm May night on the Cote d’Azur.

Rather than let Cannes-heads label their film as fabulous or a flop — these folks have been known to endorse  Von Trier and “Tree of Life” tripe — Sony cleverly decided to show the film to EVERY critic at same time. The curtain would rise in Cannes, and critics from Orlando to Indianapolis, Philly to LA, DC to Atlanta, would see the credits roll at exactly the same time.

Similarly, in Greater Orlando we saw “Deadpool 2” at 430, LA saw it at 1:30, etc. this past week.

I’ve always thought that’s the way it ought to be, no favoritism for “the trades,” no Pixar sneak-peak to Time Magazine to game opinions and influence critics prone to pack mentality.

Yeah, we were all pretty much in lock step when “Da Vinci Code” came out. My review is preserved on Page 5 of the Rotten Tomatoes archive. And it still earned a fortune.

So there’s no lesson here, no learning — just a coordinated effort to level the playing field. Just the way Mr. Pool wants it.

And as it’s 11, here we go. 

 

 

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BOX OFFICE: “Avengers” win again, doc “RBG, about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, cracks the top ten

box1“Breaking In” bested “Life of the Party” in per-screen average in this weekend’s new release matchup.

“Party” had more screens, and collected $18.5 million more screens. Melissa McCarthy can still open a movie.

Will Packer’s “Breaking In” gives Gabrielle Union a piece of BO glory with a $16.5 million opening for a movie that cost maybe half that.

“Avengers: Infinity War” won the weekend with a VERY healthy $62 million, a 46% drop from last weekend. It will almost certainly lose the top spot to a Marvel/Fox release next weekend. “Deadpool 2” may be R-rated, but most of the fans of these pictures are over 18, so figure it’ll open huge and “Infinity War” will fall to $30 million or below. It’s already over $1 billion worldwide, so it’s all mad money, at this point.

Same with “Black Panther,” which will be at $700 million Thursday night, as it loses screens and exits the top ten.

“Overboard” held audience and remains ahead of “A Quiet Place,” “Tully” added screens and lost a lot of audience, “Isle of Dogs” will hit $30 million Monday, maybe Tuesday.

The big surprise, a documentary about “RBG,” a sassy Supreme Court justice, cracked the top ten with a big per-screen average.

 

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Netflixable? Toby Jones views his Mommy issues through a twisted “Kaleidoscope”

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As interesting as he inevitably is, there’s something forlorn about British character actor Toby Jones, a sense that he’s carrying on through the hopelessness of whatever dead-end life he’s portraying this time.

Short, balding, Jones gives every role the weight of the world, the sense that he’s doing his best to beat back the bitterness.

He works a lot — sci-fi and drama, British TV — and plays a lot of scientists, officious officials (“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy”), assistants, gossips (Truman Capote in “Infamous”) and downtrodden fixers. Sometimes, they aren’t quite so downcast (Hollywood agent Swifty Lazar in “Frost/Nixon.”).

At least when he’s a villain, or a villain’s henchman (“Captain America: The Winter Soldier”), he gets to break out a demonic smile.

The rare occasion when he becomes a leading man puts his disappointment or efforts to avoid it front and center. Check out the melancholy myopia of the ever-so-twee TV series “detectorists,” for instance.

In “Kaleidoscope” he’s Carl, a little man in a little flat in a huge, impersonal complex living a lonely life, with only his mother’s guilt-loaded answering machine message for company. He faces that blinking “You’ve got messages” light with utter dread.

When he finally gets a woman (Sinead Matthews) up to his place for Sea Breezes (vodka, cranberry juice, grapefruit juice), he’s on his heels from the start.

“Where’s all your stuff?”

He doesn’t have much.

“Let’s look at your profile. Where’s your computer?”

“I use one at the library.”

And when the aggressively fun-seeking Abby asks if “I’m your sort,” because men tend to date their mothers (her theory), it’s nosebleed time. His.

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He dashes to the bathroom, she rummages through his place. Not to rob him, but to figure him out — a prison library book here, an old-fashioned kaleidoscope there.

“You don’t drink. You don’t smoke. You don’t dance. Maybe you’d rather read a book.”

What’s her angle? Maybe she’s just drunk. His? He’s got secrets, layers of secrets.

Carl’s mood turns on a ten pence piece.

“Why are you here?”

“You look like a pushover.”

When he wakes up after blacking out, Abby is dead. What’s he done?

That sets off the ex-con’s frantic effort to clean up after the crime, curling up in a ball to see if the luggage he has on hand will hold a short woman’s body. Bits and pieces of the night, his psychological past, and that damned answering machine message interrupt the sound of…sawing.

Jones’s brother Rupert wrote and directed “Kaleidoscope,” a psychological thriller with touches of the Edgar Allen Poe story “The Cask of Amontillado” that Toby Jones filmed years ago. And maybe a hint of “Psycho.”

Because when Mummy (Anne Reid) shows up, she has an awful lot of access to his life and information about what might have just happened. He wants nothing to do with her, and her every word and action seems to implicate him and complicate the crime he apparently has committed.

She cooks, “It’s liver, your favorite,” and he’s not having it.

“You have no idea what I like.”

Mumsy, from the Isle of Wight, is all “bygones,” and unflappable in the face of Carl’s naked hatred.

“Is there no way to start again, after all this time?”

“But I haven’t had any time. All my time’s been taken away.”

Interrogations, phony alibis, a brute of a husband, an overly curious police dog — and afterwards, the third degree in velvet gloves from the hated on woman on the sofa.

There’s a built-in inevitability about “Kaleidoscope” that puts the burden on performances for this to come off, and they almost salvage a generally bland, mostly unsurprising thriller.

Reid’s toxic smile and Matthews’ working class wantonness work. But in a role no-doubt written for him, Jones downloads his entire arsenal — hurt, shyness, pain, guilt and rage — onto the screen. This is a performance that smacks of desperation and denial, a paranoid loner making it up as he goes along.

He’s better than the film, more interesting as a character than as a character watching justice close in on him.

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MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, disturbing themes

Cast: Toby Jones, Anne Reid, Sinead Matthews, Deborah Findlay

Credits: Written and directed by Rupert Jones. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:39

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Preview, an “Incredibles 2” Mother’s Day Card

Eye popping action, and a celebration of “Mom.” June 15.

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Netflixable? John Woo in winter still brings epic fights, in “ManHunt”

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The faithful know what’s coming.

Epic shootouts, sword-fighting set-pieces, the old “ultra violence,” ballets with bullets, Sam Peckinpah slo-mo for “the cool bits,” sacrifice, a little opera, a little jazz, tough guys acting tough to each other, tender to the womenfolk, always hoping for “A Better Tomorrow.”

And doves. White doves. A little Christian symbolism in the middle of the mayhem.

The great Hong Kong action director John Woo hasn’t seemed as active in recent years, turning out period epics intended for the Chinese market (“Red Cliff,” “The Crossing”). But at 71, he shows he’s still got those “Killer/Hard Boiled” gangster chops for Netflix with “ManHunt,” a Sino-Japanese thriller with a silly plot, vintage Woo fights and a lot of blood.

It’s a messy mixed-bag movie built around the “Lucy” plot (a secret superdrug that makes its users super-soldiers, psychotic killers whose pain threshold is through the roof). But it’s John Woo. We love John Woo. You can’t be an action film fan and not want to see it.

And on Netflix, you can start and stop and rewatch “the cool bits” over and over. Laugh when the heroes — a fugitive lawyer (Zhang Hanyu) and flinty cop (Masaharu Fukuyama) — are lashed together with handcuffs, chase each other and brawl over Jetskis (Or are they SeaDoos?) as they flea corrupt cops and biker assassin babes all over scenic Japan. 

Qui Du (Zhang) is a Chinese-based fixer/lawyer for Tenjin Pharmaceuticals who wakes up after a corporate party in dead with a dead woman. The cops are there in a flash, and as they do in bad movies, they tell Qui Du he’s about to die in a set up. Which gives him the chance to escape, the first of many.

Woo escalates these chase scenes from a sprint through crowded streets and subway tunnels, to a Mini Cooper, Jetskis (or SeaDoos) and so on. What, no planes?

Inspector Yamura (Fukuyama) is the brooding, tough-talking detective who on the very day Qui Du escapes, is breaking in a too-young/too-cute sidekick (Nanami Sakuraba), who smiles up to the point where some murderous punks take her hostage.

“You can’t go anywhere with that idiot,” Yamura growls to the villains. “It’s her first day. Give her a break!”

Yamura gets most of the best lines here, delivered in Japanese in a neo-Mijune growl.  He’s hurled into the hunt for Qui Du, tracks him down repeatedly and somehow lets him go. Repeatedly.

“There’s only one end for a fugitive! A DEAD end!”

Qui Du must evade capture so that he can figure out the real killer, get to the Tenjin boss (Jun Kunimura) and find out what’s going on. 

His deadliest and most persistent pursuers are straight out of a James Bond movie — sister assassins Rain and Dawn, played with pistol-packing verve by Ji-won Ha and Angeles Woo (Yes, she’s Woo’s daughter. Cinema nepotism knows no borders). 

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Qui Du’s most fascinating encounter is with a group of Japanese hobos and the sage Sakaguchi (veteran Japanese martial arts movie star Yasuaki Kurata). Yes, there are still Japanese hobos.

The picture is all over the place, with many many actors, many plot threads and characters switching from Japanese to Chinese to hard-boiled English in a flash.

But John Woo knows pacing, knows how to keep a movie on its feet and hurtling forward, and damned if “ManHunt” doesn’t manage that, flaws and failings and all.

It’s not one of his best, not on a par with “A Better Tomorrow,” “The Killer” or his Hollywood debut, the Van Damme Cajun kill-off “Hard Target.” But hey, it’s John Woo. Even his failures are more interesting than this week’s Hollywood genre actioner directed by this or that no name film school alumnus.

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MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence and lots of it, drug abuse, sexual situations

Cast:Hanyu ZhangMasaharu Fukuyama, Ji-won Ha, Angeles WooNanami SakurabaJi-won Ha, Angeles Woo

Credits: Written and directed by John Woo, based on the Jukô Nishimura novel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:46

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