Sarcastic Movie Reviews

Usually when you go to a Spike Lee “Joint” (that’s ghetto for “film”) you can expect to see 2 hours of Blacks hating Whites hating Orientals hating Hispanics hating Blacks.

Being white usually means it’s as much fun as attending a woman’s studies class wearing a “Hooter’s” t-shirt.

Either Spike has grown tired of pointing out how evil I am or the racial problem in American has been solved because “Inside Man” is actually a caper story involving cops, and bank robbers.

Score one for whitey. Well, sort of.

Asking Spike to completely ignore racism would be like asking Quentin Tarantino to film a movie in a knife store without showing blood.

Both men have an axe to grind, it’s just that Quentin usually films his splitting some guy’s melon open with 1960’s surf music in the background.

Spike still gets his digs in (like when the racist white cops mistakenly call a Sikh an “Arab” and pull his turban off) but these are only minor distractions.

The movie opens a little disappointingly when a group of painters wearing dark sunglasses and coveralls manage to stroll into a busy bank one morning without drawing any attention.

Just for giggles, try wearing a ski mask the next time you stand behind someone at an ATM machine and see how nervous they get.

Let’s face it. You might as well be wearing control top pantyhose on your head because nothing says “stick em up” like a group of sunglass wearing painters strolling into a bank at 8am.

The bad guys disable the security cameras with some sort of James Bond flashlights that knock out the signal and then they lock the doors and drop some smoke bombs in the lobby.

To which I ask this:

If you’ve disabled the cameras then why are you tossing around smoke bombs? If you’re wearing disguises then why bother disabling the cameras with some hi-tech piece of gadgetry? Why not just unplug them?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all over Tom Cruise bungee jumping into a vault or watching Katherine Zeta Jones’s ass slither under a laser trip wire, but the flashlights just seemed over the top in a realistic movie like this.

If you’re not going to have exploding chewing gum then just get on with it.

Denzel Washington plays a detective who’s in the doghouse with the brass after a large sum of money disappears and it looks like he stole it. On this fateful day he is the only detective on duty and he gets his big chance to redeem himself in the eyes of his superiors.

Your chances of seeing a cop in a movie that isn’t in trouble with his superiors are about the same as seeing George Bush eating a salad at a Greenpeace rally.

The twist comes into the picture when we meet the bank’s president.

Christopher Plumber isn’t that concerned about the hostage taking until he realizes WHAT bank it is.

Nervously he picks up the phone can calls “Mr. Wolf.”

Ok, he would’ve if it was Pulp Fiction, but since this ain’t he calls Jodie Foster.

Jodie Foster?!! Was Richard Simmons busy?

Whereas you actually believe that Harvey Keitel could dispose a headless corpse in the backseat of a blood spattered car, somehow you get the feeling that Jodie’s inside connections end at Bloomingdale’s.

Well, at least it wasn’t Paris Hilton.

Jodie keeps trying to get us to believe that she’s some shadowy international wheeler-dealer who could have you killed with the bat of her eye, but I’m just not buying it. She’s as menacing as weiner dog wearing winter booties.

For the next two hours Clive Owen, Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster play mental games with one another as each attempts to get out of the situation with their best interests looked after.

Jodie aside, the movie is mostly clever and other than some small lapses in logic I can’t fault it too much.

I’m still not convinced that Jodie’s character was really necessary but I’m just grateful that she wasn’t carrying around a chihuahua in a Hermes bag.

Go ahead, make my day.

Oh, sorry I guess I have Clint Eastwood on the brain. Why Clint you ask? Well because I just watched the 1977 movie Gauntlet except that it’s 2006 and they’ve called it “16 Blocks.”

You have to love Hollywood. They’re so bankrupt for ideas for film that they’re remaking bad films from 20 years ago.

Remember “Rollerball?” How many idiots green-lighted that piece of crap?

Seriously guys. How difficult can it be to come up with a NEW bad idea for a movie?

Let me help you.

Um…ok… lets take the cop and say that he’s married to a woman whose brother is a mafia hit man and he realizes that he’s gay and he’s attracted to his sister’s husband.

I call it “Brokeback Mob Man.”

“I don’t know how to hit you!”

Where’s my freaking Golden Globe award?

In “16 Blocks” Bruce Willis is a washed up, alcoholic cop with a gimpy leg tasked with escorting a criminal who is about to testify in a court case just down the street.

As is always the case nowadays, the informant has to be an annoying guy who constantly talks as if he was Joe Pesci in those exponentially bad Lethal Weapon films.

To make things worse, Mos Def who plays the informant has decided to mumble all of his words because he’s discovered that intelligibility is a sure fire way to endear yourselves to the inner circle of Academy Award voters.

I blame Benicio Del Toro who started this bullshit in “The Usual Suspects.” Now every freaking actor thinks a speech impediment is clever.

Why not publish books with smeared lettering too? Let’s bring the literary set into the party.

On the way to the courthouse, Bruce stops at a liquor store to buy a 40 pounder of Canadian Club, but as he’s walking back to the car he interrupts an assassination attempt on Mos Def. When he calls for back up, the policemen who show up, attempt to finish the job and the chase is on.

Now, this is a movie called “16 Blocks” and in that Bruce has already driven at least 4 or 5 of them before the bullets start flying I’m going to say that he only has to get another 10 blocks further down the crowded streets of New York.

Ah, but you’re thinking like me. You’re saying to yourself “How hard can it be to find a cop with a bad leg trying to get to a courthouse 10 blocks away when he has a 2 hour time limit?”

Did I mention the time limit? Apparently if Mos doesn’t show up at 10 am (or something like that) then the jury will make it’s decision and all of the damning eye witness testimony is moot. Well, then again O.J. and Robert Blake are playing golf somewhere so I guess it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility.

New York City. Rush Hour. 10 blocks to go. We’re not looking at many options here. The streets are congested, the Subway is swarming with crooked policemen and Bruce Willis is an flabby cripple.

This is like filming a car chase with riding lawn mowers.

Sit back and put your feet up because I’m about to spoon feed you scene after scene of people running into alleyways and finding some unlocked kitchen door.

Are you telling me that with all of the crazy crack whores and people with tin foil hats that live in New York that no one ever actually locks their back doors? We’re not talking about a single door either. It’s like Monty Hall was standing there holding a microphone.

Let’s see what we have behind door number 3 Johnny!”

If you’re a group of corrupt cops running around the Bronx trying to kill a witness then why aren’t you leaving one or two of your group guarding the exits before you run into the brownstone?

These idiots all swarm into the building like Benny Hill chasing that little bald guy, only to find that Bruce has ducked out the other door when they kick in the wrong apartment.

Bruce never thinks of calling the local news station and getting a camera crew down to film his stupid ass either which is probably the first thing I would have done as I was running down the street.

Finally, in the most moronic moment in the film, they pull a Clark Kent.

All it takes to fool a group of heavily armed men is a change of clothes.

He kind of looks like Superman, except that he’s wearing glasses so it can’t be him.

A mediocre film. Still better than Firewall though.