TJR review
(TJ=70, Critics=65, Users=73)
This is world class gydfw (pronounced “gid-few,” or “guy you don’t fuck with”) movie. Think of Denzel Washington as the “Equalizer.” It’s also a strangely artsy movie with an odd beginning, a good but offbeat soundtrack and good but not well known actors. (The hero, Bob Odenkirk, is a skinny 58 year old suburbanite who has trouble getting his garbage out on time on Tuesday mornings.) Then, he has an accidental run in with five drunken Russian mobsters on a bus. They happen to work for the baddest Russian mobster I’ve ever seen in a movie. And the story carries you with it from there.
Our top reviewers all gave the movie a score of 75 (60 = green), including Roger Moore, Mick LaSalle (citing “Taken”) and James Berardinelli (citing “John Wick”). The best quote came from A.A. Dowd: “Make no mistake, this is caveman bullshit, yet it’s caveman bullshit made with style and wit…” Dowd works for the A.V. Club, which has a terrible -32 cumulative lifetime score, oddly distributed as follows: A.A. Dowd +1, Noel Murray +1, Katie Rife +1, and Others -35; they need to re organize.
Two “woke” reviewers trashed the movie, missing the consensus by 25 points or more: The New York Observer and Slant Magazine, where no name reviewer Chuck Bowen had the “honor” of lowering Slant’s lifetime cumulative score to a record -100, one hundred recommendations to see a bad movie or not to see a good movie. My Review of Reviewers has three categories:
1. DO WHAT THEY SAY (Consistent, accurate reviews with no big misses.)
2. IGNORE THEM (Flip a coin; it's just as accurate.)
3. DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY SAY (10 or more misses of 25 or more points; very often wrong by a lot.)
In the case of Slant, you would absolutely see better movies by consistently doing the opposite of what they say.