Movie Preview: An amnesiac pregnant woman, a remote British Isle and Maxine Peake telling Erin Kellyman she’s not “Woken” enough to leave

Yeah, the headline says it all.

Looks tight though. Paranoid, the works.

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Movie Review: “The Life of Chuck” Dances for the Reason to Live at the End of the World

Speaking as a critic who’s been “blurbed” a few times over the decades, you’ve got to recognize the double-edged sword such “recognition” in the advertising on a poster for a movie is. That’s you, out there, effusive in your praise, struggling to come up with a coherent, grammatical endorsement of a movie you loved.

And if, as some of the breathless shills for “The Life of Chuck” are insisting, it’s a “life altering experience,” “profoundly magical” and an “It’s a Wonderful Life’ for today,” they’re on safe ground.

But if it isn’t — and it most decidedly is not — at least they have the comfort of knowing that nobody will fling their words back at them from a DVD box or a collectible poster, as in days of yore. Because nobody’s collecting the poster for this, and I dare say few will be buying it on Bluray for their collection.

It’s a cloying, feel-good end-of-the-world story that reaches for emotions in a few stand-out moments, and grasps for many others that just aren’t there. Based on a late-life Stephen King novella, it leans on dance scenes, the words of Walt Whitman and Carl Sagan and Gimme Some Lovin'” by the Spencer Davis Group (“Little” Stevie Winwood on vocals and organ) to give you the “feels.”

Sometimes that works, and often it annoys, a 101 minute annoyance about facing death and the end of times dryly narrated to DEATH by Nick Offerman.

But if Stephen King was feeling nostalgic, wistful and philosphical about “the end,” having survived into old age, a near fatal running-over by a van, decades of coming in and out of favor and the task of passing his horror baton to his son Joe Hill, we owe him this indulgence. Director and screenwriter Mike Flanagan (“Doctor Sleep,” the recent “House of Usher,” “Hill House” and “Bly House” horror series) we owe a lot less.

A cascading torrent of calamities have befallen the Earth — sinkholes and tsunamis, California is sliding off into the sea, vast chunks of it at a time and it’s the End of the Internet as We Know It. There’s nothing for it but to stare into the night sky and watch planets and stars wink-out of existence and resign ourselves to a favorite Carl Sagan quote about the fleeting nature of time, “the great clock of the universe,” and our tiny lives within it.

Sagan’s “We are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day,” isn’t quoted in the movie. But it informs every downbeat moment of it.

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a midwestern teacher trying to keeps his students — and their parents at parent-teacher conferences — focused on their studies with the world ending around them and life serving up day after day of bad news, work-arounds and drive-arounds as society, civilization and life breaks down. Suicides are rampant, something the teacher’s ex-wife/nurse (Karen Gillan) is struggling with.

But this former couple has a bigger concern. “The end…Who do you want to be with for it?”

All around them, on billboards, on radio, the Internet and TV before all that vanishes, are ads congratulating “Chuck Krantz” for “39 Great Years.” It’s become a joke, and in this movie, that joke is a “cosmic” one.

Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) lived his life of comfy “quiet desperation” as an accountant. But in the movie’s signature knock-out moment, this accountant at a conference stops on hearing the busking of street drummer Taylor Gordon, and breaks into dance. As a crowd gathers, a just-jilted-bookstore clerk (Annalise Basso) is coaxed into the city square to dance with him.

“The Life of Chuck” will tell Chuck’s story in reverse order from that moment, how he (Benjamin Pajak, Cody Flanagan and Jacob Tremblay play younger Chucks) lost his parents as a child, was raised by his grandparents (Mark Hamill and “Ferris Bueller” alumna Mia Sara), how he discovered the childhood joy of dancing with his granny, rediscovering that in school and then casting aside that love to be practical and take up accounting like his grandfather.

Chuck’s “congratulations” messaging takes a supernatural turn as the movie progresses and we see him on his deathbed, presumably before The World Ends, comforted by his wife (“New World” Pocahontas Q’orianka Kilcher), perhaps reconciled to the Big Message of this over-narrated wade into what “28 Years Later” reminded us about life and why we should live it while we have the chance — “Memento mori.”

Through it all, a story told in reverse order (more or less), our endlessly opining voice-over narrator redundantly reminds us of the Great Imponderables of The End, as many a character must “wonder why God made the world.”

This feel good “worlds’ end” dramedy isn’t as uplifting as “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” isn’t as sad and fatalistic as “On the Beach.” King and Flanagan lack the writerly/cinematic existential heft to truly ponder “the end” from an old man’s perspective the way Orson Welles did throughout his career, from “Citizen Kane” and “Magnificent Ambersons” to “Chimes at Midnight” and “The Other Side of the Wind.”

So their point, such as it is, amounts to little or nothing.

Offerman’s reading of Flanagan and King’s narration never goes deeper than glum and never rises above glib. The performances are competent and some players have “moments,” but by and large they don’t register in much more than an archetypal sense.

“The Life of Chuck” has a resignation and a timeliness to it that render any “escape” it might offer moot. Every viewer brings his or her own baggage into the cinema, but whatever might have touched many seems buried under disorganized treacle.

It’s no wonder that apocalypse movies are all the rage this year. Missiles flying in the Middle East, distracting from an ongoing genocide, a snake oil salesman in charge of American health care and a soulless con man with his finger on the button that could generate End Times, forever boasting of his cunning plan to end Federal disaster relief, it’s all a little too grim to get away from by slipping into a cinema for a generally dull downer of a movie.

“Profoundly magical?” All this facile, faux fatalistic film lacks is a Bobby McFerrin sing-along over the closing credits. Then again, they’d probably have Offerman narrate that, too.

Rating: R, profanity

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, Annalise Basso, Q’orianka Kilcher, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Carl Lumbly, Mia Sara and Mark Hamill, narrated by Nick Offerman.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Mike Flanagan, based on the novella by Stephen King. A Neon release.

Running time: 1:51

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Movie Review: A Tour of Jolly Olde Zombieland “28 Years Later”

It begins with children watching the “Teletubbies” on the tube, reaching for a more innocent time.

But the TV is just a distraction. Parents have parked their kids in front of it while they cope with the awful news they’ve heard of outside of that room, which they lock when the inevitable happens. And when a child opens that door, there’s another inevitability — wanton, pitiless and horrific slaughter of the innocents.

Danny Boyle’s return to his “rage virus” zombie universe comes 18 years after “28 Weeks Later,” years further removed from “28 Days Later.” And “28 Years Later” faces the grim cinematic landscape of zombies over-exposed, an Oscar-winning director forced to try and top “Zombieland” and “Train to Busan” and whole TV series devoted to life in a crumbling civilization where zombies are an ongoing threat.

Aside from far more graphic gore, Boyle doesn’t top himself or the best of the zombie offerings from Korea and elsewhere in intensity and terror. So the Oscar-winning director, working from a script by “Civil War” writer-director Alex Garland, struggles to give relevence and intellectual/allegorical heft to a story about “the other” and a humanity deadened to the reality of an enemy that must be killed on sight ad infinitum.

But all the sizzling in-your-face editing, the black and white montages of 2archival conflict footage, the aural montages of the decades that have passed since “28 Days Later” put Boyle over the top and Cillian Murphy on the map (crackling dial-up internet, etc.) fail at topping the heart-stopping suspense and terror of Boyle’s earlier zombie films, or their Korean offspring.

It’s the suggestions of humanity’s rising inhumanity, the allusions to Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” with a Kurtz who has reconciled and resigned himself to the horrors around him that make this picture worth chewing over.

I can’t be the only one who wishes “Slumdog/127 Hours” Boyle had found fresh filmic subject matter and that he had the blank check to film it that a zombie sequel offered. But “Yesterday” punctured that balloon.

All these “Years Later” a survivor from that “Teletubbies” massacre has grown up to be a bearded, longbow-armed warrior (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) with a son of his own. And Jimmy thinks twelve-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) is ready to leave the island refuge where British civilization clings to life, to go on a foraging expedition and collect his “first kill.”

The signs of a “keep calm and mind the ‘limited resources'” society are all over “Holy Island” (Holy Island of Lindisfarne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, England, UK). They’ve survived the end of Britain, “quarantined” from the rest of Europe, which escaped the worst of the “rage virus.”

As the Elders of Holy Island offer little resistance to the idea of a boy going with his father to kill
“the infected” while scrounging for anything useful on the mainland, and Spike’s mother (Jodie Comer) is having mental episodes and incapable of pushback, off they go.

“He’s got no mind, he’s got no soul,” Jimmy coaches his kid on facing assorted zombie “types.” “The more you kill, the easier it gets.”

The wonders of the vast, nearly empty “mainland” get lost in that lesson. But seeing distant smoke and hearing that a far-off “doctor” is responsible for it puts Spike in mind of “saving” his mother by getting her treatment. Seeing his insensate lout of a father cheating on her after a night of drunken revels in the Holy Island pub when they return seals that pact. He will steal away and take her to mysterious and “mad” Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes).

They will encounter Swedish commandos patrolling Quarantined Britain, and one (Edvin Ryding). And they will find that doctor and his “Memento Mori” bone-statue monument to the dead, all of whom — “infected” and uninfected, were human at one point and mortal in the end.

Little about this is original enough to the zombie genre to note — zombies “evolving” into different strata of threat (Dwayne Johnson/Jason Mamoa-sized “Alphas” being the worst), odd flashes of humanity (childbirth) in them.

And Garland and Boyle, for all their allegories about the dehumanizing nature of conflict — the ingenius use of a 1915 recording of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Boots” as a soundtrack cue — stumble to keep track of “rules” for their zombielandand, throwing logic to the wind as often as not. They deliver an ending that’s the equivalent of both of them throwing their hands up.

So “28 Years” isn’t as good as “28 Days” or even “28 Weeks” or “Train to Busan.”

But they Boyle and Garland have made a go at making a zombie movie for the moment, a post-Brexit, Israeli genocide, Middle East war, insensate MAGA ICE-goons thriller that makes you think even if all the technique, editing and new levels of violence can’t hide the fact that the filmmakers haven’t quite made up their minds about what they’re trying to say.

Rating: R graphic, gruesome and bloody violence, nudity, profanity, an explicit scene of childbirth

Cast: Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, Edvin Ryding and Ralph Fiennes

Credits: Directed by Danny Boyle, scripted by Alex Garland. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:55

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Movie Review: All that stands Between a Black family and Starvation (and being Eaten)? “40 Acres”

Our apocalyptic times are summoning cinema that reflects a survivalist bent, be it faith-based preppers ready for societal collapse (“Homestead”), America’s open political wounds resulting in “Civil War” or the umpteenth iteration of End Times brought on by zombies (“28 Years Later”).

“40 Acres” is a tense, violent and generally satisfying survivalist thriller that ties into history, historical “erasure” and a plausible “how it all breaks down” cause — a fungal plague that triggered wars and the ugly Darwinism thfor the humans who lived through it.

With arable land scarce, livestock wiped out and the supply chain and food chain and social order all but wiped out, Black descendents of slaves who escaped to Canada find themselves battling to protect their farm and prevent the ultimate “erasure.” Because the roaming gangs of white thugs who attack their “perimeter” are meat eaters.

Danielle Deadwyer of “Till” and “The Harder They Fall” is the matriarch of the Freemans, a woman who mustered out of the military and raised her blended family under no-nonsense military order.

She’s taught them to farm with a tractor and hand-planting seeds, drilled them in martial arts and firearms and home-schooled 20ish Manny (Kataem O’Connor), her teen Danis (Jaeda LeBlanc), her stepdaughter teen Raine (Leenah Robinson) and her youngest Cookie (Haile Amare) with an emphasis on practicalities, and a working knowledge of “The Proletarian’s Pocketbook” when they’re old enough.

Her First Nations husband (Michael Greyeyes) still goes by “Sarge,” so he’s a former comrade in arms and is totally down with the military discipline thing.

Their 40 acres is fenced in with CCTV and other security measures (that took some doing), powered by solar panels and dedicated to growing vegetables and grains, maybe a little weed to swap for a neighbor’s moonshine. Their farm house isn’t in great repair, as it’s been 30 years since society started its steep downturn. But they’ve got a bunker and an arsenal in the basement. They’re going to need both.

Because just as “flesh eaters” move into the area and farms start “going dark” on the shortwave radio, Manny spies a lovely woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) taking a dip in his favorite river. Mom’s whole “We don’t need nothing or nobody” ethos, and the “don’t trust ANYONE” edict for these dangerous times are both about to go out the window.

Director and co-writer R.T. Thorne might make the “land is the most valuable commodity” pitch in an opening title telling us of the woes of the world. But he figured out early on that nothing raises the stakes in a post-apocalyptic like roaming armed gangs of cannibals. They don’t want “land.” They have no interest in tilling it. They want the folks doing the farming as a main course.

The picture spares few details in the grisly business of shooting, slicing and butchering people, and treats us to some M*A*S*H unit-styled field surgery/first aid as well. It’s pretty bloody. Not “28 Years Later” bloody, but bloody close.

Deadwyler makes a fine, wry and tough-talking Mama Bear in this narrative, credible as an action heroine, but also diminutive enough for us to figure “Somebody or somebodies twice her size are going to get the best of her” at some point.

The unnamed head villain (Patrick Garrow) is made up to be a Brad Dourif look-alike and otherwise woefully underdeveloped. And the picture is predictable to a fault, but with good performances and furious firefights in between a lot of sneaking around in the dark (doing it with flashlights and carlights on that any enemy could track) and third act dash of sentiment amidst the gore, it comes off.

And unlike Danny Boyle’s “28 Years” conclusion to his undead trilogy, it never pretends to be more than a genre picture and thus never goes quite off the rails the way the zombies-in-Scotland finale does.

Rating: R, graphic, gruesome violence, pot use, profanity

Cast: Danielle Deadwyer, Kataem O’Connor, Michael Greyeyes, Milcania Diaz-Rojas, Haile Amare, Jaeda LeBlanc, Patrick Garrow and Leenah Robinson

Credits: Directed by R.T. Thorne, scripted by Glenn Taylor and R.T. Thorne. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:53

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Movie Preview: “Sorry, Baby”

I’m having a hard time tracking down YouTube versions of newer “Splitsville” and “Predator Badlands” trailers in theaters this weekend.

But this earlier one was among the Neon and A24 and Searchlight fare promoted before a showing of “The Life of Chuck.”

This Eva Victor (writer, director and star) Sundance darling looks sweet and smart and sad.

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Thursdays are for Cine-bingeing

It’s a long day at the movies which I hope to squeeze in zombies, Rebel and brides and Tom Hiddleston.

A couple of movies, maybe as many as four. A popcorn addiction nourished, kids films avoided. Hard to avoid zombies, however.

Death and dying and Danny Boyle. Oy. It’s not like the apocalypse isn’t upon us OUTside the cinema, is it.?

I don’t necessarily recommend watching “The Life of Chuck,” “28 Hours Later” and “40 Acres” back to back to back. End Times, kids, End Times.

It’s not like the news, the courts and the fact that I saw mice in my neighborhood AMC was grim enough.

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Movie Preview: Jeremy Allen White is “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere”

The Golden Globe (LOL) winning star of “The Bear” plays The Boss at a pivotal moment in his hyped rise from star to “artist” to “legend.”

It’s about writing and performing the confessional “Nebraska” LP, and getting “suits” to believe in it and release it.

Stephen Graham plays his father in flashbacks, Gaby Hoffman plays his mother. Marc Maron, Paul Walter Hauser, David Krumholtz and Jeremy Strong play other figures in the life and career of Bruce Springsteen.

Scott Cooper of the Oscar-winning “Crazy Heart” writes and directs this one, which opens wide Oct. 24.

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Movie Review: An Indian Woman stands up to a “Pinch,” and Faces the Consequences

Uttera Singh’s “Pinch” is a picture that runs on outrage. It shows us a sex crime and demonstrates how hard it is to get anyone — including women, her own mother and even herself — to take it seriously in a country where “women’s security” has been slow in coming.

A young Indian woman is “felt up” on a crowded overnight bus ride by an older “uncle” she knows. “Did you like that?” he leers, safe and comfortable in his entitlement and his reputation within the patriarchy.

She is shocked and shamed by this, and can’t bring herself to tell her mother. The “uncle” is emboldened enough to stalk her into the mobs at a Hindu festival that bus took them to. But as they’re all jammed up together, she sees her chance. She pinches the wife of a short-tempered wrestler, points her finger at the “uncle,” and Mr. Molester gets beaten to a pulp.

Fair enough. But outrage erupts in her small circle as the cops wonder what she’s not telling them, the man’s wife accuses her, her mother’s business is ruined, they’re threatened with eviction. Guilt eats at her over the rippling effects of her one moment of fighting back against a patriarchal culture where “women’s security” has been dismissed in the past, and cracking down hasn’t solved the problem.

Singh, who co-wrote, directed and stars as the victim, Maitri, frustrates the viewer with the injustice of it all, how this “uncle” Rajesh (Nitesh Pandey) seems immune to consequences for his actions as Maitri is shunned, badgered and even sent his hospital bill as he and his self-righteous wife (Sapna Sand) demand an apology and Maitri’s own mother (Geeta Agrawal Sharma) is inclined to provide one.

Maitri, an aspiring travel vlogger whose “feminist” mind was broadened during college in America, seethes with fury at all this, as will most Western viewers of the film. But “Pinch” is being received as a just deserts comedy in India, especially by women reviewing it. And you certainly see their point.

When Maitri is questioned about her “relative” Rajesh, she’s quick to correct that with a “No…he’s more of a ‘super friendly’ ‘uncle.’

A neighborhood in the small Indian city where Maitri lives is called “New York City,” and all around her are chattering mothers obsessed with bowel movements — “Happy tummy, happy life!” (in Hindi with English subtitles).

Other light touches include Maitri’s friend and much-more-successful online influencer Samir (Badri Chavan), host of “Samir Eats.” Yes, he’s a portly food vlogger, all about quality “content” and eating and eating. But is he an ally, or just another man outraged at what Maitri has done?

Singh, the embodiment of the “stubborn” daughter whose eyes were open and views were broadened by travel, is convincingly conflicted as Maitri. Behind the camera, she sets up expectations, and teasingly dashes them as she masterfully builds our indignation into a lather as Maitri faces further humiliation and more victimization after her “impulsive” act of revenge.

Because we all know who had it coming, even if most of those whining “just APOLOGIZE” do not.


Rating: unrated, violence including sexual assault, profanity

Cast: Uttera Singh, Geeta Agrawal Sharma, Badri Chavan, Nitesh Pandey and
Sapna Sand

Credits: Directed by Uttera Singh, scripted by Adam Linzey and Uttera Singh. A Budhratna Films release.

Running time: 1:23

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Netflixable? A Monstrous Hit-man takes on Masked Mass Murderers in Japan’s “Demon City”

Movies like “Demon City” are why we pay extra attention to that one credit in an action picture’s production — “action choreographer” or “stunt coordinator.”

More that one actor I’ve interviewed over the years has mentioned he or she took on a picture because of who they had choreographing the fights to make them look “cool.” Jason Statham was the first I heard mention it. He took on “The Transporter” because Jianyong Guo was the hot stunt coordinator of the moment.

And somebody had to invent and stage that barefoot brawl where our hero snaps the toe-clip pedals off a racing bike, spills a barrel of motor oil all over a garage, and kicks ass while bad guys slip and tumble around him.

Takashi Tanimoto was stunt coordinator for the martial arts thriller “47 Ronin.” But what he does with Tôma Ikuta (“The Fallen Angel”) in this martial arts massacre is a wonder to behold, a next-level, “We’ve never seen THAT before” dance of violence and death-dealing.

“Demon City” is a Japanese “John Wick,” where our mysterious, seemingly unkillable “baba yaga” is a demonic hitman out for “Oldboy” styled revenge. The classic car is different — he drives a vintage Mach One Mustange — and there’s no dead beagle. But the story arc is the same and the mayhem just as spectacular.

Sanaka (Ikuta) finishes one last bit of mass slaughter in Shinjo City before retirement, hacking and kicking has way through legions of villains, in essence clearing out “the docks” for a new gang to move in.

Sanaka relies on his balance, his martial arts skills and his vast collection of knives, hatchets, machetes and what not, which he sharpens with care.

His middle-man (Tarô Suruga) has arranged this “job,” and for Sanaka’s comfy retirement with his wife and little girl. But that is not to be. Masked marauders have preceded him home and have his wife and daughter Ryo hostage. The Master in this killing cult of mobsters speaks of a “demon” who arises in their “demon city” every so often, and that’s who he figures Sanaka is.

The gangsters who hired him to clear the way for their rule over the city’s underworld cannot have such a “demon” amongst them. They kill his wife and child, and finish Sanaka off.

Ah, but “Demon City” is based on a manga. And you know how “death” works in comic books. Sanaka isn’t dead, merely reduced to a scarred, catatonic “vegetable.”

But twelve years later, when he is released from a prison hospital — speechless, blank-eyed, drooling in a wheelchair — dirty cops show up to finish the job. And Sanaka wills himself to his feet, and fights as he crawls. Because revenge is the great motivator in this narrative. And Sanaka has a lot of masked murderers to track down and hack, kick, choke or shoot to death.

Coordinator Tanimoto has Ikuta, with some digital assitance (sped-up movement, etc.), lurch and jerk about, using upper body strenght and balance to flip guys out of windows even as he struggles to move under his own power.

Even before his beat-down and hospitalization Sanaka is a fighter with moves that suggest every joint in his body is double-jointed. Every blow that lands sets up the next, every minion he faces provides the momentum for crashing into the next one.

Watch the way Sanaka slams one uniformed goon against a rough concrete wall and DRAGs the poor, underpaid punk’s face along that wall, leaving a bloody red streak in his wake. Note what he does to disrupt a drug lab/human trafficking/”recycling” warehouse business. Mere forklifts are no match for his moves.

The first big fight/ambush is in the prologue, an assault on a mobster’s Morocan style-beachside lair, a white house/fortress painted crimson, one slash and splatter at a time.

Sanaka has a mission, a threat to make good on. “I’ll kill ALL of you,” he vows, in Japanese or dubbed into English. Lunging, zombie-jerking about, kicking and flailing, is he still quick enough to fend off bullets with his machete blade?

Will a bow and arrow accomplish what firearms cannot?

You’ll want to watch this with subtitles, because their is no substitute for butch yakuza bellowing in a brawl, bad guy after guy shouting “SANAKA!” as if their physical rage alone isn’t enough.

The story is formulaic — yes, “John Wick” also hewed to a formula grounded in Japanese and Hollywood revenge fantasies. There are dirty cops and a “good” cop helper, twists aplenty because every time you’re sure that was a mortal wound, somebody comes back from the dead, back for more.

But the fights in this bad-boy-amongst-bad-boys butcher shop thriller have to be seen to be believed. “The Raid,” assorted blind swordsman tales, “Oldboy” and John Wickworld all are glimpsed in this slaughter in scarlet saga from Seiji Tanaka.

Some day, some generous minded filmmaker is going to give a Takashi Tanimoto a curtain call credit for a movie like this. Whatever else goes on behind the camera, he’s the one who makes this one and its anti-hero look cool.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic bloody violence, profanity and perversion

Cast: Tôma Ikuta, Tarô Suruga, Matsuya Onoe, Miou Takata,
Masahiro Higashide and Ami Tôma

Credits: Scripted and directed by Seiji Tanaka, based on a manga by Masamichi Kawabe.A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

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Movie Preview: Duhamel’s a hit-man laying low, but with “London Calling”

On the run from a London job “gone wrong,” forced to babysit a mob boss’s son (Jeremy Ray Taylor) and make a (Murderous?) “man out of him.”

Aiden Gillen, EveryVillain Arnold Vosloo and Daniah De Villiers star in this Sept. 19 release, filmed in South Africa, where B-movies can be made for a bargain.

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