#same with movies except i just go watch tv shows instead… the letterboxd is bare

[top10statuesthatcriedblood]

do u ever go man i have GOT to listen to more NEW MUSIC [doesnt] [for several months] [sometimes its years]

[thesffcorner]

Marauders

Marauders is a 2016 crime-drama directed by Steven C Miller. Now, before I say anything else, this is NOT a review. I don’t feel comfortable enough to give this film a review, because I watched it at, no joke, a pub, with no sound, only subtitles.

I still watched the film, but I also missed like a good 30% of it, by virtue of being at a pub, so though I don’t think I would like it any better, had I seen the full thing, I still urge you to not take this as me telling you (not) to see this film. This is just me, talking shit for 2 pages, because what I saw of this film was WILD.

Now, I say that but really, this film is a rather generic action movie. What makes it wild is both my experience of watching it, where every time I would look at the TV some baffling new development would happen, but also the leaps in logic this film makes are… just pure confusion.

So, the plot (as far as I could proximate) goes as such: Four guys, who all look wear bargain-brand Halloween costumes of Crossbones from Civil War, rob a bank and kill the manager. An FBI agent, played by Detective Stabler from Law and Order: SVU (whose name is apparently Montgomery) gets put on the case. Before he can even get coffee there is a second robbery where the leader of the Crossbones team, stabs a man in the throat with a bullet(??) and the robbers get away.

The bullet has something to do with TJ, an army ranger who supposedly died but his body was never found. He was part of a rogue unit that kidnapped the former owner of the bank they robbed, and his entire unit was killed by a navy seal team. The guy who got stabbed with the bullet, was the commander of said navy seal unit.

We then get a truly bewildering scene, where the leader of the Crossbones team SKYPES Agent Montgomery, to tell him that they sent him files that Senator Cook (who is played by Bruce Willis) is gay, and that’s somehow evidence that he’s corrupt??? And then Montgomery is overly nice and accommodating to a man who just murdered a CIVILIAN, and a veteran in an ARMED ROBBERY, saying that the files the robbers sent won’t be enough to get the FBI to investigate Cook. Like, my dude, maybe they are busy trying to catch the ARMED THIEVES who have been robbing banks?? Also was the whole bit about Montgomery telling Crossbones that it’s none of his business that Cook is gay supposed to show that he’s an upstanding man? Otherwise, how is his sexuality relevant to his supposed corruption?

Montgomery then goes to talk to Cook and is unnecessarily aggressive with him, even though at this point he has no evidence that Cook even did anything, outside of possibly being gay and not appreciating that Montgomery is baselessly accusing him of things that the fucking ARMED ROBBERS told him. Side note, I realize I am like 12 for finding this funny, but anytime two men in an action movie try to intimidate each other with lines like “you’ll give me what I want or else I’m going to put you against a wall and take it” I just lose it because WHO TALKS LIKE THAT? Is that supposed to sound threatening?

At this point I missed a lot of the film, so I assumed that the robbers attacked Cook’s offices, but no; there is a third robbery in which there is a lot of shooting and SEVERAL security guards die, including one of the robbers (RIP nameless Crossbones impersonator). The FBI is super close to getting the robbers to surrender, when Montgomery bursts in, guns’a blazing, like a fucking cowboy movie, shoots the one guy, takes the second robber as a hostage at gunpoint, and has a standoff with the third robber who takes a woman hostage. And then he FUCKING LETS THE ROBBERS go WITH THE MONEY! What? And Dave Bautista, who does absolutely nothing in this film (except get shot at the end) tells him he saved lives??? WHERE?

This is where I gave up on the film, so the rest is a blur except for the following baffling scene, where Montgomery talks to special agent Wells. Now, Wells has been in the film from the start, and at first I thought he was the main character. He tells Montgomery that he thinks Montgomery is conducting the mission morally and really well (??) by focusing on Hubert and Cook’s corruption instead of the robbers, which, in case it wasn't clear by now, by how the film has awkwardly refused to show us who the robbers are, even makes MONTGOMERY pause and be like huh? So Wells, not a good liar.

Somewhere at this point we get some more explanation of what actually happened. Hubert conspired with Cook to kill his own brother so he could inherit the bank, and Cook staged a terrorist threat and sent in TJ’s unit to Costa Rica. They killed the brother and then got killed as a ‘rogue’ unit by the navy seals. One of the seals was Wells, who was a sniper and he saved TJ. He is now trying to take down both Hubert and Cook. TJ, I should add is barely in the film, and even though he got arrested, I never actually saw him on screen.

The third remaining robber is also a special agent, and his name is Mims. His wife has terminal cancer and he wants to give the money back so he can atone, but Wells won’t let him and ends up killing him. So are we supposed to be rooting for Wells? Because so far he has been an outright murderer, a homophobe, and the only good thing he’s done has been to donate the money, which is like trying to compensate for dumping toxic waste in the ocean by using a metal straw.

Montgomery and Wells have another heart to heart where they essentially just gush again about how good and moral the other one is, and yet again Montgomery lets Wells go, and even tells him not to go after Cook, because he can still use the money to start a new life and atone for what he did as a navy seal. Maybe I missed it, but I just didn’t understand WHY Montgomery was so kind to Wells, at all. This man is a killer!

The last scene is Montgomery sitting down to have wine with Cook (who has escaped in Mexico) and Wells coming to kill him. He and Montgomery have a staring match, Wells puts his gun down, Montgomery kills Cook, Wells kills his bodyguard and then fucking walks away. The end.

My brain has lost the ability to form sentences. First off, this plot is more convoluted then my own first draft of book 1 of a trilogy I wrote when I was 13. There are so many characters and plot points in this film, and all of them are complete dead ends. The main theme is, I think, supposed to be corruption, but nothing that happens has anything to do with corruption! Hubert and Cook pulled a hostile takeover, and used the military as cover, but they didn’t embezzle tax money or something. We never focus on any of the shady dealings Cook has, at most we get is lukewarm commentary on the people who enlist in the army because of poverty, but the film isn’t about that.

The second big issue are the characters. I can understand Montgomery being the lead; he is the every-man, investigating a conspiracy. But why is Cook the final boss when he wasn’t even the one who planned the hit? Why is Wells the leader of the robbers and not TJ, you know the guy who was left for dead, who was framed as an assassin and whose entire unit was killed?

I actually liked Montgomery but that’s because I think it’s impossible to dislike Chris Meloni, he’s just such a calming presence. There was some stuff about his wife being dead (I didn’t really pay attention to that part), but at no point did I understand why he was so sympathetic to the robbers, especially Wells? He willingly committed murder to save Wells, but why? Wells wasn’t a good man, and he should have been punished for the amount of people he killed in this film, regardless of the intentions he had. This isn’t John Wick, he wasn’t the best of all the assassins, he was a guy who got in too deep and got away with it, because the FBI agent after him was… moral.

Two more things. I realize it’s kind of gauche to complain about casting choices, but everyone in this film looked the same. Not only was the cast 99% white, all the actors looked alike, and I couldn’t distinguish any of the robbers or the people who died. Even their names all sounded similar!

Also apparently women don’t exist in this world, except for one FBI agent and one other one who I think was a singer and either someone’s wife or girlfriend.

Would I ever watch this again, fully this time? Maybe, if I have literally nothing else to do. Should you watch it? Honestly, I think Money Monster, Den of Thieves or Triple 9 are all better choices, and at least are ACTUALLY about corruption.

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