hillcoat

john hillcoat’s new movie is about some law breakers and law enforcers coming together for the good of a heist. it’s got casey affleck, chiwetel ejiofor, aaron paul, norman reedus, gal gadot, anthony mackie, teresa palmer, clifton collins jr, woody “meat in my mouth” harrelson and kate winslet as a russian mob boss. score by atticus ross. I thought it was funny that it comes out next month and I never even heard of the thing til now and everything I do hear just makes it sound like it could be great or a terrible piece of shit the way these things go sometimes. I mean the shit you see out there nowadays, it wouldn’t surprise you to be scanning the torrent sites for something to download and see kate winslet was a mob boss in some cheap ass dtv movie starring a wrestler, and that would still give you no clue as to the quality of the movie.

here’s a trailer that came out three months ago, not that these things ever help with giving you any sense of what the actual thing might be like either

you gotta figure in real life you can’t just run in a bank with balaclava’s on anymore. the swats and helicopters will be up your ass so fast cause everyone will be thinking your a terrorist. you have to wear a halloween or novelty mask so people will think “oh white guy bank robber normal criminal which I know from movies, not brown terrorist super criminal which I know from fox news. I can adjust my panic appropriately.” you need every advantage, we’re in the last days of this kind of crime as it is.

I was in because I’ll watch anything Hillcoat does, but I thought the trailer was pretty cool, at least tonally.

I saw this.

It was a movie.

There’s a bit where Winslet’s Russian Jewish crime-boss-in-stead-of-her-imprisoned-husband’s red velvet heels are pointedly shown in comparison/contrast with the blood being washed from her kosher abattoir floor, and what at first seemed like heavy-handed piece of imagery settled as a real piece of character texture: this is a person who knows how to wear these ostentatious, impossible to clean shoes in a butchershop without getting them stained. The movie is full of details like that which scream Hillcoat, and really elevate a boilerplate script.

It plays like it could use another half hour of them HIllcoat textures, a lot of them with Harrelson (who plays a drunk sad blasting cop uncle and at point plays a vidcon that might have been Sad Blaster?!)

I guess my shitbox theater changed it’s mind about having this movie here