The trailers for this looked intriguing because John Boyega was doing an incredible job; and I saw that the negotiator was played by the late Michael K. Williams (The Wire). Yet, before even watching the film I wondered – how can I root for this guy? Even if the VA did mess up and not pay him the money he was owed – once he takes over a bank and holds hostages, I’m not on his side. You might be right, but what if they figure out what went wrong, pay you the $18,000 or whatever amount you were owed, and now you’re looking at a stint in jail? Top that off with the fact that we’ve had movies like Dog Day Afternoon, or Denzel Washington in John Q (where he takes over a hospital so his kid can get a medical procedure they can’t afford), and many, many more. So I much prefer when a movie comes down the pike like Falling Down (Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall), because at least it has somebody upset with the system, who pulls out guns and threatens people in an amusing way and we enjoy the original ride it takes us on. This movie is a bunch of bank robbery cliches. It’s not helped all that much by the fact that this was a real-life story of a military veteran who is on the verge of being homeless because of a clerical error. Perhaps it would if it delved deeper into who he was (even at the end, they didn’t give us that information on the screen, just that he never did get his money).
Brian Brown-Easley is shown talking to his daughter on the phone at the start of the film. By all accounts, he’s a good father. Yet we realize that he’s divorced, since he’s checking into a motel. Writer/director Abi Damaris Corbin sets the stage nicely. Yet he’s probably seen all those movies I previously mentioned, and wants to tell his version of the process that’s involved with a stand-off, instead of more about the characters involved. That means we get great character actor Jeffrey Donovan (who always plays the bad guy), as one of the head officers, smirking and not seeming to care for how Williams wants to do the negotiation. We get to see how a newsperson (the always great Connie Britton) wants to get the big scoop, and may not even care about the outcome of this person who is hurting. It’s nice that she does show a certain amount of caring, and isn’t just a cutthroat reporter the way Renee Russo was in Nightcrawlers.
It’s interesting that I watched this movie on the day that Biden waived $10,000 of student debt for people, when the VA in this story took his disability payments from an injury in Iraq, and gave it to a college to pay off a debt he had.
Brian calls his ex-wife Cassandra (Olivia Washington) to tell his daughter Kiah (London Covington) that he loves her. He goes into the bank and withdraws $25 (why would the teller ask him if he wants big or small bills on an amount under 100? Would he have wanted that amount in all singles? But I digress). He gets the money and hands her a note that he has a bomb, and…we’re off. And it takes about 35 minutes before anything of interest happened for me, and that was a police helicopter over the bank and as Brian looks up, we see him in Iraq looking at a helicopter. Nice edit.
Boyega’s performance is so good, that we see his rage, but also his care for the two bank employees he has hostage, not wanting them to be scared. We’re told he has some mental issues, and we see some paranoia slip in (he thinks the newscaster he’s talking to wants his social security number to also steal money from him; my wife asked why a reporter would ask for that, but there are many other questions I had about how this whole thing was done).
Estel (Nicole Beharie) plays the bank manager, and Rosa (Selnis Leyva) is the scared teller who initially got the note.
A better screenplay would have given us a character study with a message, and we’d all be sympathetic. Instead, this just feels like the type of movie we’ve seen hundreds of times.
1 ½ stars out of 5.