23
EZTHE WASHINGTON POST.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019plague movies of this ilk: If you
tear the fabric of time by altering
what has already happened, it
can be difficult to sew it back up
straight. This makes for a narra-
tive that is occasionally muddy
and ambiguous, as Jack issues
instructions to Ashley with the
benefit of hindsight that isn’t
quite 20/20. He knows what
happened, in other words, but he
can’t predict what will happen
when he undoes it.
This leads to circumstances
that put him — and Ashley — in
sometimes violent jeopardy, as
he tries to simultaneously save
the girl, by selectively plucking
out threads of the past, and
unravel the w hodunit. His efforts
make for a watchable movie, if
one that’s less than deeply satis-
fying, not to mention observant
of the laws of logic.
Emotionally, “Don’t Let Go”
works like magic. Intellectually,
not so much.
[email protected](of “Selma”) are immensely lik-
able performers, and their on-
screen rapport is palpable, even
though they are hardly ever in
the same place t ogether, let alone
the same time, save for a handful
of scenes.
One early scene sets up the
nature of their bond: Ashley’s
father, played by Brian Tyree
Henry, has bipolar disorder and
is a not-quite-reformed drug
dealer, so s he’s l ooking f or a more
reliable father figure. Midway
through the film, a shot of Jack
and Ashley s haring a diner booth
together — as the dead girl talks
to her distraught uncle — is a
metaphor, not meant to be taken
literally. In another scene, a pre-
murder Ashley hangs up the
phone with future-Jack, only to
chew out past-Jack, who has a
look of confusion on his face that
may mirror the one on yours.
“Don’t Let Go” manages, at
times, to generate a nicely weird
“Twilight Zone” vibe but fails to
sustain it, as it also runs into
some of the same problems thatLET GO FROM 22Movies
Killerman
A crime thriller that starts with cliches and goes bloody bonkers
BY HAU CHU“Killerman” takes its influences
— countless pulpy crime thrillers
— and synthesizes them into an
increasingly rare thing: a movie
that doesn’t aspire to any greater
heights than where it lands:
squarely in the middle of the Au-
gust dumping ground.
And, for most of its nearly two-
hour running time, that’s okay. It
has all the of plot contrivances
and stock characters that you
would expect from a gritty New
York City-set crime drama.
To give you an idea of the level
of subtlety on which “Killerman”
operates, Liam Hemsworth stars
as a jeweler named — wait for it —
Moe Diamond. Moe is involved in
a small-time money-laundering
operation, along with his buddy
Skunk (Emory Cohen) and
Skunk’s uncle (Zlatko Buric,
whose performance as a campy
crime boss suggests that he thinks
this movie is more fun than it is).
Moe and Skunk step up their
responsibility by taking on a drug
deal on their own — one that goes
awry when they are ambushed by
crooked cops. The ensuing car
chase ends with the duo escaping
but not before crashing their car,
leaving Moe with amnesia.
Writer-director Malik Bader
doesn’t try anything new with the
well-worn memory-loss plot de-
vice, as Moe hazily retraces his
steps to regain his trust i n friends,
discovering secret personal affairs
— among o ther things — along the
way. That’s just about what you
would expect from a movie like
this
But t hen there’s t he final act.
A small sequence of revelations
knocks the film off its otherwise
pedestrian footing, abruptlybumping it up to a level of lunacy
that will more likely make you
laugh than gasp. The reveal is so
jarringly on the n ose, that it makes
the movie you were just watching
almost completely unravel.
Hemsworth, for his part, does a
serviceable job with the material
at hand — serviceable enough to
chip away at his reputation as the“other” Hemsworth. (Most of his
dialogue consists of variations on
needing to remember and exas-
perated screams.) His decision to
accept the role of Moe might re-
mind you of other h unks who have
taken on grimy roles in
small-budget f ilms: Ryan Gosling,
for instance, in “Drive,” or Robert
Pattinson in the criminally over-looked “Good Time.” “ Killerman,”
however, never ascends to the cali-
ber of those star turns.
Thinking about those films —
and their striking similarities
with “Killerman” — might make
you wonder where “Killerman”
went wrong. Like “Good Time,”
“Killerman” was shot on film, and
they share an aesthetic of a
punchy, retro-synth score. It’s
pretty obvious that Bader is a fan
of “Drive” director Nicolas Wind-
ing Refn’s b ody of work, too.
Aside from all the homage,
“Killerman” takes an adequate
stab at telling a dark tale about a
couple of schmos who get in a little
over their heads, but who are
bound by feelings of real friend-
ship — or at least as real as can be
rebuilt in the wake of amnesia. Its
seedy underbelly works well
enough to keep you interested
through the crescendoing acts of
brutal violence that we’ve come to
expect from a thriller.
But it’s that bloody, bonkers
final act.
Put it this way: For better and
(mostly) for worse, “Killerman’s”
title proves apt in more ways than
one.
[email protected]BLUE FOX ENTERTAINMENT
Liam Hemsworth, above with Mike Moh, turns in his hunky bona fides for a gritty role in “Killerman”
as an amnesiac jeweler who moonlights in money laundering and must re-trace his steps.R. At AMC’s Hoffman Center 22
and Potomac Mills 18. Contains
violence, pervasive crude
language, drug material and some
sexuality. 112 minutes.Also Opening
In “Bennett’s War,” a n Army veteran (Michael Roark) struggles to recover from injuries suffered in an
IED attack so that he can enter a motocross race and save his family’s farm. Country music star Trace
Atkins plays the man’s f ather. PG-13. At area theaters. Contains some crude language and brief violence. 95
minutes. See Common Sense Media’s review on Page 25.
ESX ENTERTAINMENT/ESX ENTERTAINMENTMichael Roark, left with Allison Paige, stars in “Bennett's War,” a film about an Army veteran
recovering from injuries suffered in war who is also trying to save his family’s farm.
R. At area theaters. Contains
violence, bloody images and strong
language. 103 minutes.