I was in the mood to turn my brain off witch an action movie I hadn't seen before, so did just that.
I won't do a full review since I'm only 30 minutes in, but the movie is Ambulance, 2022; Jake Gyllenhaal, some black dude, and some hispanic chick.
It's competent enough so far, generally. It's not doing anything too fancy, but I appreciate that from an action movie. But the Modern Audiences™ nonsense is unavoidable. I wish I didn't notice this but, once you know, you know.
Every black person is competent and in a position of power. Every white person is some combination of psychopath, loser, or incompetent. There's only been one woman in focus so far, but she's - no kidding - "the best paramedic in the city," and extremely competent. Hobbled with some newbie white dweeb...who's probably going to die or otherwise get damseled, at a guess.
Gyllenhaal and Black Dude are brothers. Black Dude was adopted by, wait for it, Gyllenhaal's psychotic criminal father. Black Dude is a patriotic veteran who's trying to get his life together, while his white brother is a criminal who drags him into shit. Gyllenhaal's criminal crew are, I believe, all white...and some of the most ridiculously incompetent or insane people around. Hilariously, they're also a very diverse set of whites for some reason; you have I believe an Italian, Irishman, and some sandal-wearing hippy hacker or something. It's bizarre.
It's all so tiresome.
Sounds good. Also I just (like literally just now) got done rewatching Baby Driver (2017), which also held up. Another relatively modern action movie that managed to be good.
It's real sad how racialized everything has become, where you have to sing a movie's praises for having good and bad white people, good and bad black people, etc. As a crime movie, you expect some psychos. You had black psychos, you had white psychos. But you also have good people regardless of race too...which really underlines my issues with Ambulance; if it had been a little less selective and targeted when it came to the race of characters, it wouldn't have been such a bad movie. It still wouldn't have been great, as the writing still had some issues even putting race to the side, but at least it wouldn't have left quite such a bad taste in my mouth.
Anyway, put Baby Drive on your list too.
Last bit of the rant...I hate how crap most things are...because I find myself worried to watch things I haven't seen before, so just end up rewatching stuff...and generally having a better time than when I try to watch anything modern that I haven't seen. Seriously, Ambulance pissed me the fuck off...and wasn't even the worst movie ever.
Ha, I can usually spot that nonsense from the trailer... and when I watched the trailer for Ambulance (whenever it first aired) I instantly wrote it off. It reminded me of the movie Kin (2018), where a delinquent White brother was always trapped in criminal mischief and his adopted younger black brother was the good son, and of course the delinquent older brother got their White father killed. Sound familiar, eh?
They all recycle the same tropes for establishing predictive programming patterns in how people view races. Once you establish what the patterns are you can spot them a mile away, which is precisely why I stayed away from the film Ambulance. Saw all the usual tropes and patterns of the Left rearing their head.
That being said, I know exactly how you feel about the demoralisation and paranoia of trying to avoid media that is designed to purposely demoralise you with Lefty propaganda. It messes with your sociocultural equilibrium, so much so that it makes it difficult to consume or engage with anything culturally without filtering them through the lens of the culture war.
It can also dampen the enjoyment of non-woke films/shows/games because you're always watching/engaging with the expectation that it may go woke.
All that being said, it's become a bit easier these days to spot the patterns before engaging: is it from a major Hollywood studio? Likely woke. Does it star or prominently feature the moral minority trope? Likely woke. Is the female a commanding, snarky girlboss? Likely woke. Etcetera, etcetera.
But yeah, Baby Driver was a decent flick. Jon Hamm being the final boss was a bit unexpected, as well as Kevin Spacey not being the final boss. That one surprised me.
The Channel (2023) was another halfway decent Western crime thriller/heist film -- had some really good action beats. Always been a fan of Clayne Crawford and Max Martini, too, so that was a good treat. . Somewhat predictable but also pretty badarse, and they weren't afraid to show black guys as ruthless thugs/gangsters, which was a surprising twist.
EDIT: Almost forgot about Spectral (2016) and 13 Hours (2016), those two were both really badass too.