Month: April 2025

Warfare tells it like it is

This week, the Average Dude is reviewing Warfare, the true story of Seal team Alpha One who, on an observational mission during the Battle of Ramadi (2006), are attacked by Iraqi forces. What sets Warfare apart from any of the other Iraqi war movies we’ve seen is the fact that this story was written by Ray Mendoza – an actual soldier in the actual battle. All the details were put together from the testimonies and memories of the platoon. As far as true to life accounts of battle, it doesn’t get any more accurate than Warfare.

This ain’t Hollywood’s Seal Team

As always, I wait until after I’ve seen a movie before I watch any reviews of it. I try not to absorb anyone else’s take so that I can give you a very honest AVERAGE DUDE’s opinion. And, having watched Warfare, I can tell you two things:

1: it is absolutely worth watching. It’s a reminder that even the much lauded, infinitely capable and imminently deadly US Navy Seal can be overcome. They can be hurt and killed. They are not indestructable. They are most definitely in harm’s way.

2: Seeing a movie about a real deal, honest to goodness battle brings with it some heavy emotions. Completely without thinking about it, we mentally separate reality from fiction, and that fact shouldn’t be ignored. If you are looking for a little escapism, Warfare is actually a reminder of how brutal this life is in some places. And Warfare is brutal. Not even kidding a little.

It’s just…different

Watching the blood and violence of Warfare is different from, say, a John Wick movie. In your head, there’s always the knowledge that Babayaga is not real. Heck, even in a true life movie like 13 Hours: the Secret Soldiers of Bengazi (I watch it several times a year), you know that Michael Bay did some of his magic on it.

Not so with Warfare. From all accounts, this is just as it happened. No Hollywooding here. Just the raw, horrible truth.

 

No real good feels walking out though

I guess you would have to say that Warfare had a happy ending of sorts. Most of the home team made it out alive. Some with less of themselves than when the movie started. And we feel for them and we were happy when they got the hell out. But we didn’t really feel relieved. We weren’t smiling. We were uneasy. And I think I know why.

Honest but kind of pointless

Warfare was an honest portrayal of an actual event. There were no real heroes (except that all of them are heroes). And there wasn’t really a heroic mission. It was just a mission that didn’t seem to have a purpose. People died, soldiers were maimed for an objective that was unclear at best. Not defending a strategically critical bridge. Nobody was taking out an enemy airfield or storming a beach. The entire reason Alpha One was holed up in that building was just so mundane. Maybe that is part of the point. In Warfare – as in war – soldiers often die for little reason. And that is an uncomfortable thought.

This may be an unpopular take…

Some of the reviewers I really like have heaped high praise on Warfare for it’s gritty realism and keeping amazingly true to actual events. That’s fair. Hollywood doesn’t deal in things like truth and honesty and realistic all that often. And that’s kind of the whole point of movies…to take us away for a couple of hours. It’s our numero uno form of escapism. Is there room for a Warfare that gives us the unvarnished truth? Sure, yes, absolutely. But in this case, don’t look for an uplifting message or good feels on the way home. And while I liked Warfare, I can’t really say I enjoyed it. Weird, but true.

So, with some genuinely mixed feelings, I’m giving Warfare a 3.5 out of 5. If you want to give it higher marks, I’m not gonna argue. For this Average Dude, it just felt bleak. Honest, but bleak.

Check out all the Average Dude Movie Reviews and our super cool merch at www.barredlands.com

Follow us on X

Follow and Like us on Facebook

#barredlandsdotcom #AverageDudeMovieReviews #PCLoadletter64 #Warfare #AlphaOne #RayMendoza

The Amateur would have been an above par movie…for February

Mrs Average Dude and I were somewhat eagerly waiting for The Amateur to arrive at our local moviehaus. I say somewhat because, at least from the trailers, the premise was not horribly overused and the star seemed very believable in the roll. It’s worth noting that I have had to dramatically adjust my movie expectations downward over the past year or so. With that in mind, The Amateur was okay and even a little bit of a surprise.

Funny how a 110 lb girl can do it

The Amateur is the story of Charles Heller, a mid-high level tech genius for the US Government, who is driven into action when his wife is killed by terrorists half a world away. Mostly, Heller’s field of expertise is decryption. So, in a efficient bit of story, Heller’s bona fidas are established…he’s super smart. That is his power.

The writers of The Amateur are smart enough to realize that turning Malek into a full-fledged action star like John Wick would be stretching disbelief beyond its breaking point. Heller’s nerdy brain-power is believable. Unlike, say, Lioness. Or Charlie’s Angels. Or the children of Sucker Punch, which are totally unbelievable. And therein lies the hook. Like John McClane and Sarah Conner, tech-nerds needed a hero, too.

Oh, and along for the ride but mostly wasted are Lawrence Fishburne and Jon Bernthal (who is in just about everything these days and I’m here for it).

Rami Malek is the hero we never knew was possible

Of all the suspensions of disbelief we are called on to adopt when we step into the theater, maybe the most subtle one is this basic premise…nerdy tech genius focuses his grief and anger and channels it into revenge. The Average Dude has a lot of friends and among them are a number of nerdy tech geniuses. I have to say, I don’t think a single one of them would respond in the way that Charles Heller did in The Amateur. I also don’t know a single average dude that would strap on a fire hose and jump off the top of Nakatomi Plaza, but that’s beside the point.

Point is: these are one in a million guys who don’t know what they’re capable of until they are in the sh!t. And that’s every man’s fantasy.

Alpha Nerd

And I think that may have been the goal of The Amateur. Outside of Revenge of the Nerds, there really hasn’t been a techie star to stand toe to toe with the bad-guys lone wolf style. Someone called them the Alpha Nerds, and that’s really cool. Charles Heller is a much needed hero for the tech-nerd class. Maybe that was the whole thinking behind this movie.

Only the $$$ will tell

I loved how this movie didn’t try to make Charles Heller into the smartest guy in every room. Sure, he’s super smart…in his field. But putting him in the deadly world of spy-catching and globe-trotting, Heller was a fish out of water. He was out of his element, learning as he stumbled along. An helping of luck was necessary for him to keep living and that was not left out. In the end, Heller prevails (sort of). Will there be a second Heller adventure? Could they still call it The Amateur? I dunno. Only the box office will tell.

Passing grade

The Averaged Dude is giving The Amateur a passing grade of 3 out of 5 for decent story that didn’t make us throw logic too far out the window and providing a very emotionally relatable hero. Again, this would be totally overlooked if released in July. For April, it was good enough. Never going to be an annual watch. But they can’t all be Die Hard.

Check out all the Average Dude Movie Reviews and our super cool merch at www.barredlands.com

Follow us on X

Follow and Like us on Facebook

#barredlandsdotcom #AverageDudeMovieReviews #PCLoadletter64 #theAmateur #RamiMalek #LawrenceFishburne #JonBernthal

Black Bag for a black time

Well, the gloom of February’s movie Dead Zone has swallowed up March. When the best theater movies for the year have been Last Breath, Unbreakable Boy and A Complete Unknown…its been beyond bleak. Literally, there has not been one single movie that your Average Dude has been truly excited to see and, for most of them, much less than excited to review for you. And Black Bag, yet another star-studded feature film by a well-known and loved director (Steven Soderbergh) is the pickle on top of this crap sandwich of a movie season.

Not much to review but here goes nothing

Steven Soderbergh is no slouch when it comes to film-making. He has 14 Oscar nominations and five wins, including Best Director for Traffic in 2000. That was a pretty great year for Soderbergh, as he was also nominated for Best Director for Erin Brockovich. Crazy.
Soderbergh’s bona fidas established, there was reason for optimism going to see Black Bag. However, it became very apparent fairly early on that this movie was not going to end well…for the audience.
Black Bag boasts some excellent stars to go along with an Oscar-winning director. Michael Fassbender has been one of my favorites ever since I saw him in Band of Brothers. Cate Blanchett still carries celebrity cache even after the tragedy that was last summer’s Boarderlands.

And yet, here we are

Those three names attached to Black Bag were enough to give me more than hope…they gave me expectation. So, my post-movie disappointment and frustration are understandable. When you get a big nothing burger out of a show you expected nothing from, the taste of that burger is what it is. But when you expect a juicy steak and it tastes like sawdust…it’s bitter.

When I say ‘Snoozer’, I mean that literally

I’m giving Black Bag a pretty low review. But to be totally transparent, I didn’t watch the whole movie. I literally fell asleep for a few minutes somewhere in the middle if this slogging, single-tone chore of a ‘thriller’. And when I say single-tone, it wasn’t like a John Wick movie, where the bloodletting barely gives you time to shove some corn in your face, lest you miss something cool. I’m talking about a tone so devoid of energy it was akin to playing white-noise on your headset while working. It was just. that. ssssssllllllloooooooooooooooowwww.

The Positive Take-away

To say something good about Black Bag is kind of a stretch. It’s not that the acting was bad. In truth, I would have found it increadibly hard to play a character that, BY DIRECTION, was supposed to show as little emotion as possible at all times. To Michael Fasbender’s credit, he managed to convey an intense, all-consuming adoration to his co-habitant (the weren’t even married). Blanchett was able to subtly portray a woman who knows her man is a total cuck, yet not demean him TOO much. If that was the goal of this movie, it did it’s job. But here’s the biggest rub…

Just like Drive Away Dolls. Or Mickey 17.

Yet again, Hollywood does the old switcheroo on us. Instead of giving us the tense, whodunnit thriller that the trailer promised, we got a barely fleshed out generic plot that was presented so blandly that I didn’t care enough to try to figure it out before the final reel. Instead, we got a movie about a brilliant, respected, capable yet broken man and a brilliant, respected, capable yet narcisistic woman in a relationship of convenience that seemed about an inch deep (by necessity, I’ll grant you). Nothing to admire. Nothing to aspire to. And very little in this movie to appreciate or remember.

I’m giving Black Bag a disappointing 2.5 out of 5. I’d love to discuss a different opinion if anybody has one. But the Average Dude stands by the score. You’ve been warned not to expect much. Unless that’s your thing.

Not for Nothing

As always, I wait until I’ve seen a movie before reading anyone’s reviews. I saw one reviewer call Fasbender ‘James Band’. That was so good I should have thought of it.

Then, an NPR reviewer called Black Bag ‘a witty, sexy, espionage thriller’. Sexy? Meh, I’ll give it that. There certainly is enough cross-character sexing to add to the ‘intrigue’ (although I found it about as titilating as a prostate exam). But witty and thriller are not words I wouild use to describe Black Bag. So I will say this about the NPR review…consider the source. I said what I said.

Not for nothing 2.0

Go to Google, call up Black Bag 2025 film and click on images. You will see the movie poster, a couple of stills from the movie, and uncountable number of women’s fashion accessories instead of images from the film. Literally, there was not enough in this movie to produce even a handful of press images. That kind of backs up my review. Take that, NPR.

Check out all the Average Dude Movie Reviews and our super cool merch at www.barredlands.com

Follow us on X

Follow and Like us on Facebook

#barredlandsdotcom #AverageDudeMovieReviews #PCLoadletter64 #BlackBag #MichaelFassbender #CateBlanchett

A Working Man…to BEE or not to BEE

This week, Mr and Mrs Average Dude ventured out to our local moviehaus to see A Working Man, the latest action flick from the ageless Jason Statham. A Working Man is the story of Levon Cade, an ex-special ops agent who has chosen the simpler life of a mild-mannered construction foreman. When the daughter of the company owner gets abducted by human traffickers, Levon is forced back into old habits.

Let’s get this right out front…I like Jason Statham. His unconvential good looks and British accent set him apart from the generic, @$$ kicking action star that is everywhere. He has a trademark killer stare that just doesn’t seem to grow old (like the man himself).

Having said this, I’ll say that Statham’s career trajectory seems very much to be on the downward slide. My receipts: Mechanic. Spy. Safe. Parker. Both Megs. And of course, Beekeeper. His movies are as BEE movie as BEE movies can get.

And that’s okay

Like Bruce Willis in the twighlight of his career, it almost seems like a natural progression for action stars. None of the greats were immune. Stalone has his Escape Plan, Bullet to the Head, Smaritan (and don’t get me started on Driven). Ahnold has his Escape Plan, The Last Stand, Maggie, etc. All of those are a steep dropoffs from the movies that made their star great. We see them for nostalgia, for the mindless action. We see them for their fun-factor, like riding a roller coaster we’ve ridden a hundred times. They definitely have their place and that’s fine. That’s where I’m putting A Working Man.

Nothing new here

So, did the Average Dude like A Working Man? I did. It was everything I expected from a Statham movie. No surprises, good or bad. Unlike the aforementioned Beekeeper, there were really no poorly done, over the top special effects (an understatement…they were horrendous). If you don’t count the unkillable hero as a suspension of disbelief, there was nothing I saw that made me lean over to Mrs Average Dude and say ‘yeah, that’s never going to happen’. That counts as a plus in my book.

So, I’m giving A Working Man a modest 3.1 for meeting expectations, low as they were. And maybe a +.1 for being so much better than Beekeeper. It also helps that it was rolled out to us in what might be the biggest dip in Hollywood movie quality I can ever remember, and that includes the year of covid. At least that year had Free Guy. A saving grace if ever there were one.

And What is going on with THIS?
While searching for images to add to this review, I came across this movie poster.

Call me crazy, but I think I might have remembered this scene. Was A Working Man originally supposed to be a very different movie? If anyone knows the answer, message me. Thanks!

Check out all the Average Dude Movie Reviews and our super cool merch at www.barredlands.com

Follow us on X

Follow and Like us on Facebook

#barredlandsdotcom #AverageDudeMovieReviews #PCLoadletter64 #JasonStatham #AWorkingMan