Nicolas Cage is an incredible performer, but not even his mighty commitment to subpar material can possibly snuff out the lackluster elements of the 2018 movie 211.
Strap in for a mostly forgettable jaunt where Nic Cage plays — you guessed it — a police officer responding to a 211. Billed as being a mash-up of End of Watch and … Black Hawk Down… it contains superficial elements of both and succeeds at being neither.
The opening sets up that a bunch of rogue military types feel they haven’t gotten their due despite being warriors for the U S of A (filmed in Bulgaria). So, naturally, they plan to execute a terrorist attack and rob a bank at the same time!
One acts as a distraction for the other.
Nic Cage, a cop, and his partner (who is also his brother-in-law) are assigned to mentor a ‘troubled’ teen who they bring along for a ride along. Spoiler alert: his mom is a nurse in the ICU which comes into play later.
As you might suspect, they encounter the bank robbery in progress… and things don’t go quite as planned.
The first 30 minutes could mostly be axed or condensed without losing a damn thing.
Nic Cage’s son, Weston, makes his (… I believe) supporting actor debut as one of the soldiers of fortune.
On paper, this sounds far more watchable than it is.
Everything is needlessly connected in a Crash (not the good one directed by David Cronenberg) sorta way.
The emotional content is beneath most made-for-Hallmark films.
Dubbed voices over Bulgarian actors… all to easy to spot.
Functionally illiterate screenwriting.
I’ll shut up — it’s too easy to rip this kind of movie apart.
Let’s focus on the positives:
Shot in Bulgaria — doubling for a fictional city in Massachusetts. Director York Shackleton (real name?) had a budget for visual effects that are occasionally executed well. More bang for your buck on visuals.
Nic Cage has found a zone of performing that encourages his general wackiness while also deep-diving into darkness. The ever-chatted about, highly meme-able Cage Rage is present.
What I love about Cage is that no matter how not great the movie he shows up in might sometimes be (he’s obviously a … forgive me… national treasure) — he really does go the distance.
There is a watchable cut of this movie at around 65 minutes.
As it stands… 86 minutes somehow feels like a meandering slog.
The people I watched it with grew disinterested and, I suspect, even the filmmakers were kind of bored at points while cutting the thing together.
Which brings about a larger question — should runtimes for films like this one be shaved?
I would not feel like the experience would be any lesser and certainly pairing 50-65 minute films as double features would be a welcomed cinematic form — somewhere as the novella of cinema. There used to be pictures like this — and I think now might be the time for a comeback because in this bloated solely to exist as a feature runtime… there’s a much leaner flick that is begging to be released.
I welcome shorter runtimes in an era of 3 hour superhero movies.
Anyhow…Bill Murray’s 1990 film Quick Change is a far superior bank heist movie if you’re looking for one.
To stand out in the heist sub-genre… one must find a great robbery-related twist or really commit to the experience being a pulse-pounding, entertaining situation.
To make an okay-to-bad heist film in a sub-genre stacked with great heist films — is a crime.
Don’t be fooled by the decidedly awesome poster.
Skip it — unless, like me, you are a Nic Cage completist.