I knew this was getting a middling reception from general audiences, but someone had recommended it earlier in the day. Besides, I hadn't seen Matt Damon and Ben Affleck together since Dogma in 1999. And this was the only movie left on my Netflix list that ran less than two hours.
The title is slang for confiscation. A Miami police team under Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon), including Det. Sgt. JD Byrne (Affleck), Det. Mike Ro (Steven Yeun, not to be confused with Mike Rowe), Det. Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor), and Det. Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Mareno), searches a decrepit Hialeah house suspected of storing loads of cash for drug dealers, with only one Desi Lopez (Sasha Calle) at home. They find about $20 million, far more than they anticipated. This is not entirely good news for them, because both career criminals and cops might do almost anything for that kind of take. Dumars insists that they count the money on site (trusting any labeled amounts on stacks to save time) but not call it in, and they must prepare for a shootout. Naturally, tensions rise within the team.
I left the opening scenes out of my summary above, because their relevance to the rest of the plot is not immediately obvious. Dumars' captain, Jackie Velez (Lina Esco), has been gunned down by persons unknown for reasons unknown. The skill of it suggests the work of dirty cops, and Dumars and Byrne get interrogated. Did she discover something scandalous? It's noted that Dumars recently lost a son, which can drive a man to change for the worse....
There's nothing groundbreaking in this story, nor would I expect as much given its inspiration by true events. That's OK; I can use something relatively ordinary sometimes. It still managed to go in directions I didn't predict.
You probably think the rating is for violence. Well, it does get genuinely suspenseful, but the body count's not too high, and nearly all the deaths or injuries are from gunshots. I'd say the R's mostly for swearing, at about the same frequency as Good Will Hunting. (My other language warning is for occasional Spanish, sometimes with stylized if fleeting subtitles.) No, no drugs turn up.
TR won't win any awards, as befits a January release. Basically everything in it is adequate. But hey, adequate is adequate, depending on your mood.
No comments:
Post a Comment