Brent's AV Club

Synopsis: This film charts the rise and fall of Yuri Orlov, from his early days in the early 1980s in Little Odessa, selling guns to mobsters in his local neighborhood, through to his ascension through the decade of excess and indulgence into the early 90s, where he forms a business partnership with an African warlord and his psychotic son. The film also charts his relationship through the years with his younger brother, his marriage to a famous model, his relentless pursuit by a determined federal agent and his inner demons that sway between his drive for success and the immorality of what he does.

My Thoughts: The story begins with Nicolas Cage in Brooklyn, where he and his family run a small Ukrainian diner. He wants to do more with his life, but doesn't know what. He cross the street to enter a club, where a Russian mobster is gunned down. That's when the revelation hit him.. People are violent and always want guns. He figures out a way to purchase guns cheaply and sell them to local mobsters. He then realizes that that's only small money.

He sets up a business overseas and begins stockpiling weapons from handguns to tanks and choppers. He finds buyers and becomes a millionaire by selling weapons to underprivileged countries. His brother becomes a drug addict and leaves his brother to do all of the work. Ethan Hawke plays a cop who is hot on his trail trying to bust him. When he finally gets a hold of him, he has nothing to arrest him on because Cage is great at forging papers and finding ways to ship the weapons "legally".

He begins to struggle with the morality of what he's doing. He sells weapons to some soldiers outside of a small African village only to see the soldiers kill everyone in the village with the recently purchased weapons. He wants to get out of the business, but because he's so good, he won't. One sad part of the movie is when Cage is with a president of an African country, he see's a young soldier going through army drills. He asks the president why the 14 year old boy is in the army and the guy replies "A bullet from a 14 year old is no different than a bullet from a 40 year old." And sadly, that's how countries like that think.

Rating: It was a cool movie. The characters weren't real, but gun-running is a real thing and all of the events in the movies are basically based off of real-life events.



Closing Touch: Even though it gets 3 stars from me, id say it's a rental. It's not exactly a movie that you can pop in when you're bored. You could maybe get away with watching it two or three times.

Synopsis: A group of divers find themselves in deep trouble with a drug lord after they come upon the illicit cargo of a sunken airplane.

My Thoughts: My girlfriend has been busy, Jessica is in another film. Can't get enough of her. What's not to love about this movie? Jessica Alba is only not in a bikini in about 3 scenes. That alone should give this movie about 3,241 stars, but I can only give out 5, damn.

The story has a young couple who live on a boat in the Bahamas and they are both deep sea divers. Jared (Walker) is out diving in the ocean after a huge storm (which helps kick up dirt at the bottom of the ocean to uncover more things) when he comes across an airplane at the bottom of the ocean. He goes into the plane to see the crew rotting away. He also find about 6 tons of cocaine. He decides to leave the plane be and explore some more. He begins to find items for a pirate shipwreck hundreds of years ago. The collection of items from the wreck are worth millions and people have been searching for them for decades.

A friend comes to visit and he's a hot head. He wants to get the drugs and sell them, whereas Jared just wants to grab the treasure. Needing money to rent a boat necessary to recover the treasure, they decide to take some cocaine and sell it. Unfortunately the person they try to sell it to is the drug lord whose plane went down in the storm. And I'm sure you can figure out the rest of the story-line. The druglord says retrieve my coke in a day or you're dead. And so on..

Rating: Jessica's hot, some scenes are funny and there aren't too many movies like this out there. However the scenario is predictable so it gets 2 Jessica's.



Closing Touch:It's a rental. The cast is attractive, so that may pus it to a purchase depending on how you feel about seeing Jessica Alba and Paul Walker in bathing suits the entire time.

Synopsis: A bored married couple is surprised to learn that they are both assassins hired by competing agencies to kill each other.

My Thoughts: The movie that broke up Brad & Jennifer. Good move, Brad. The story is very interesting. This is a couple that met in a foreign country, got married very quickly and within 5 years, hated each other. They both lead double lives that the other doesn't know about, and wouldn't ya know, they're both hitmen. Both of them find out that their partner is their next scheduled hit and they have 48 hours to off each other before other hitmen come after them.

It's pretty ironic and the writing is very good. I watched this movie with my roommate and we both agreed that the dialogue made this movie that much better. It's wity humor, which you wouldn't expect from a married couple literally trying to kill each other. The only thing that I didn't like about this movie were the action scenes. They're waaaay to over the top and just not believable in the least. The movie is somewhat predictable, but has a good cast. Vince Vaughn makes an appearance and anything he touches now-a-days turns to gold. He plays a 40 something assassin who still lives with his mother. Brilliant.

Rating: I'll give this 4 Brangelina's. The action is cool (though over-the-top), the cast is awesome and the dialogue is great and totally unexpected for this type of film.



Closing Touch: Id say this is a movie to buy. It's a movie that can be watched a few times before it gets old.

Synopsis: A group of astronauts gain super-powers after a cosmic radiation exposure and must use them to oppose the plans of their enemy, Doctor Victor Von Doom.

My Thoughts: Much like The Dukes Of Hazzard, I bought this movie because my girlfriend is in it. If you were wondering, my girlfriend is Jessica Alba. We've been going out for about a year now, she's certainly fantastic! (pun intended) She looked nice in the movie, but I don't like how they colored her hair and gave her color contacts.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this flick. I was never a comic book guy growing up and knew nothing about the Fantastic Four. The beginning of this movie helped with that though. Smartly, since this is the first film, they showed how they got their super-powers. The action is pretty good, it's got fighting, fire, flying, invisibility, stretching.. You name it. I don't really know what else to say about the movie, which I guess means it wasn't all that great. I'll definitely watch the sequel, but that'll probably be a rental.

Rating: Jessica's hot, it offers action and comedy and the special effects are cool so I give it 3 Jessica's.



Closing Touch: Id say it's a good comic book movie, I don't like it as much as the Spiderman films, but from what I hear, this destroys "The Hulk". It's worth a rental.

Synopsis: Cousins Bo (Scott) and Luke (Knoxville) Duke, with a little help from their cousin Daisy (Simpson) and Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson), egg on the authorities of Hazzard County, Boss Hogg and Sheriff Coltrane.

My Thoughts: To be honest, I bought this movie so I could stare at Jessica Simpson for an hour and a half. And in that aspect, I was not disappointed in the least. She's only briefly on screen for the first 45 minutes or so, but from then on she plays a pivotal role in the film. This movie makes me appreciate her hotness that much more. As for the actual movie.. I enjoyed it. I've read some reviews saying it wasn't like the TV show and just basically people ragging on it. Well, I've never seen the TV show so I can't go down that road. I can however tell you that I liked it.

Id say about 40 minutes of the film consists of high speed, backwoods and city car chases. They're pretty far fetched but they are intense and they do actually raise your heart beat. The movie is a comedy, and it did have me laughing for most of it. Willie Nelson rules and he plays the uncle. I don't want to give the story line away, but it deals with a corrupt local government who took over the Dukes' farm and they do whatever they can to get it back.

Rating: I'm going to give this movie three Jessica's. It was entertaining and basically all you could expect from a comedy about rednecks.



Closing Touch: If you like hot women (Simpsons not the only hot one in the movie), car chases and comedy, then this should be a good movie to rent.