Brick Mansions (2014)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, I take a look at Brick Mansions, which restored my faith in my hobby after my viewing (and subsequent attempt to write a post about) of The Starving Games. (Short version on Games: it's bad, never give it your money in any way, and not even I think it's worth watching. It is an abortion against all good taste and does not even have ironic redeeming qualities.)

Anyway, this movie. This was a new experience in bad moviegoing for me. It was new enough that I was actually able to catch it at a movie theater, which meant I had to maintain a minimum level of sobriety through the experience. Terrifying.

Paul Walker died for your drunk driving sins

Overview: This movie stars that one forgettable guy who died doing car racing and crashing after filming forgettable movies about cars racing and crashing as an undercover cop who has the superpower of being the main character of Gymkata and can parkour good and kick all the bad guys, yaaaay. There's also another guy, who, uh... is a totally different character because he isn't a cop. Such conflict! Very dynamics! wow

The two have to stop an arms/drug dealer from detonating a bomb he accidentally activated that will destroy a section of Detroit called Brick Mansions, which is separated from the rest of the city by giant Israel-style walls and military checkpoints for reasons that amount to "Uh... crime! And poor people! Guns!" There are also a few throwaway lines about revenge that aren't fleshed out until almost the very end of the movie.

Nobody will remember this movie in a year. It's cheesy, the plot exists mostly as an excuse to string together a series of ridiculous parkour fight scenes and car chases together, and I absolutely loved it. More on that in a minute.

Notable moments/quotes:
Not-Cop-Guy: "The law means nothing without justice!"

Drug dealer bad guy: "Nigga, where I come from cash rule everything around me." He pauses, giving the other characters and the audience time to revel in how clever a reference to one of the most famous rap songs of all time was while wearing a shit-eating grin. "Yeah, you know that one?"

Also, at the end of the movie, Walker teams up with people who were trying to murder him literally two minutes ago in a "twist" that comes out of nowhere and inspires more laughter than shocked faints due to the vapors.

My thoughts: This movie reminded me why I watch terrible movies. I was in a foul mood today, until I watched this movie. After sitting through this turd, I exited the theater and colors seemed a little brighter. The air tasted sweeter. I thought to myself, "No matter how bad life seems, I'm not as incompetent as the people who made that movie."

Watching this, like many bad movies, is like looking at a particularly dumb little kid trying to fingerpaint. It's all awful, and at the end he/she is so proud of the work. Meanwhile, you pat the kid on the head, hang up the awful thing on the fridge, and can say to yourself, "Yeah, I'm at least better than that."

I really don't know how parents do it; I really don't

The movie, as I said before, largely exists as an excuse for fight scenes and car chases. All well and good. But it thinks it's clever, because right in the last five minutes THE GOOD GUYS WERE ACTUALLY THE BAD GUYS YOU GUYS SO NOW OUR LORD AND SAVIOR PAUL WALKER CHRIST MUST TEAM UP WITH THE MASS-MURDERING GUY TO GET JUSTICE and it's pretending it's about class warfare and... ugh. If it had bothered to set any of this shit up? Yeah, maybe. I could see that. Instead, this movie, like a prisoner delivering a message, it reaches deep into its own ass and pulls out something quite shitty and not at all expected, having successfully smuggled it past the guards/audience.

The thing about twist endings is that they don't work if they can't be foreseen in some way. Telegraphing them ruins it, but there's a basic little thing called "foreshadowing" these people apparently never heard of. If you provide little hints throughout that will let the clever audience member guess at it, it'll be all the more satisfying when their suspicions are confirmed, like a good mystery novel where a sharp reader can follow along with the detective's reasoning and suspicions. This movie, on the other hand, is a mystery novel where a character who has only appeared in the book twice and spoken two lines of dialogue and seemed completely unimportant was actually the mass-murdering Baron von Assholestein all along. It's lazy and smacks of contempt for the audience. "No, this secret is too great to reveal to you! Go away and wait until such time as I deem it proper, peasant!"

In any case, this movie glosses over most of the "plot" and a good half of the movie just doesn't matter. And it's glorious, because they're trying so hard. They just can't deliver on what they want, and that can make us all feel good about ourselves. At least we aren't this awful at what we do. Probably.

I would encourage everyone to see this movie. It's dumb, it's trashy, and it will make you laugh for all the wrong reasons. This will definitely become a part of my private bad movie collection in the long run.

I give this movie a Nicolas Cage Provides a Distraction out of five. You gotta love a movie that spends an hour and a half being forgettable and braindead, then dedicating it to the memory of its deceased star. You can't fake this level of failure, people.