Directed by: Ruben Fleischer
Written by: Michael Diliberti & Matthew Sullivan
Two fledgling criminals kidnap a pizza boy. They strap a bomb onto his chest force him to rob a bank for them.
I haven't been very active in December, and I'm sorry. It's mostly because I got an internship and my time has been consumed by stress and writing articles. The internship is at a local newspaper. There's been talk that the newspaper might want someone to write about movies there. The editor in chief hasn't said anything about it, but one editor mentioned they have been discussing it. So if I get to do those I'll let you know, and probably upload them once the paper has come out.
But as for now I'm sticking to the reviews and posts I'll do for this blog and this blog only. Well, apart from letterboxd and IMDb, but I prefer doing these here, because then they feel more like my own. Also I can add useless stuff like these two paragraphs. I don't think this kind of useless chatter would be tolerated on IMDb reviews. Or maybe it would be, I'm too afraid to try.
Anyway, the first week at a new job is of course unbelievably stressful. I feel like I don't know how to do anything, I feel useless, all that. So when Friday comes and I finally get home, I just want to watch a fun movie and not think about it. (I have to think about it a little if I want to write a post about it.) What was more important than watching a fun movie was not choosing a movie. I just picked the first movie on my list and went with it. And that movie happened to be 30 Minutes or Less.
I'm starting to really like Jesse Eisenberg as an actor. Yeah, he isn't that great, but the movies are great and the characters he plays are fun. I also like Aziz Ansari, mostly because I like his stand up and I like his show Master of None on Netflix. Those two were the main reasons I was interested in this movie - them and the plot seemed interesting.
Of course after reading about it online, the story of the movie seems more and more wrong. I don't know how many of my readers are aware of the death of Brian Douglas Wells. I only learned about this now, mostly because I was seven at the time it happened and wasn't exactly following news. I'm not sure if I've quickly read through something about the case, but I wasn't really that aware of it. And even if the makers of the movie claim the case of Brian Douglas Wells hadn't inspired the movie, it does feel pretty bizarre how similar the situations are, and how they kind of made that situation into a comedy.
But before I learned about that I actually did enjoy the movie. It is thrilling and funny. Best part of the movie is the dialogue. It's the best kind of dialogue in an action comedy. It's weirdly casual and natural yet it suits the unusual situation. However the plot does have so unfortunately typical plot points we'd all rather just let die. They are easy to predict and frustrating and frankly they are getting old.
I enjoyed this movie. It's okay for an action comedy - action comedies don't need to be good, they just need to be entertaining, and 30 Minutes or Less definitely is. The key note is: it could've been better. Everything about this movie could've been way better, but either the filmmakers didn't think that, or they were satisfied with the decent movie they made.
☆☆☆☆☆☆
6 / 10
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