This is a weird one. This movie by all means should be a good and fun one to watch but yet it feels like it's still missing something to truly turn it into a totally successful and entertaining movie to watch.
Don't get me wrong, this movie still is a perfectly watchable one but it so easily could have been so much more and it also definitely feels like it should have been a way better movie, considering all its potential and the people involved. The story is there, the characters are there, the right actors are there, yet it somehow doesn't all come together.
It's hard to put my finger on. It's not just one thing causing all of the problems but it rather are a bunch of much smaller things that cause this movie to never work out as an entirely successful and effective one. One is its pacing. While this is a fast paced movie it still isn't snappy enough. You can argue that it's also wasting too much time with some of its side plots and side characters, which all no doubt is done in an attempt to give the movie some more meaning and depth to its story. But that's another problem really; the story feels like a too simplistic and straightforward one, despite the presence of many different characters. It besides is never really anything surprising enough and when it does surprise, it's usually with something silly and totally unlikely.
The comedy often also falls kind of flat because all of this, Not that this movie ever becomes a completely unfunny one but it's all a bit too predictable and simple really at times. It isn't ever being original enough with anything and instead this movie feels like a mishmash of different genre movies combined. Not that it makes the movie an entirely messy one but I still don't really know how I should take this movie. Is it more of an action movie? More of a crime flick? Or perhaps simply just a comedy?
Also don't really understand what Denzel Washington is doing in this movie. I see him as someone who is above these type of movies. I enjoyed him in the movie but still...It's also a movie that mostly just focuses on its two main characters and spends all of its time on making them engaging and fun ones to have to follow around, which in this case definitely goes at the expense of its supporting cast. Bill Paxton, James Marsden and Edward James Olmos all seem to be playing some intriguing and fun characters but the movie hardly expands on them and doesn't provide enough background information, which all feels like a missed opportunity.
A too simple, too formulaic and too predictable movie that's still entertaining enough to watch but is hardly anything that's going to impress you with anything or is one that's going to stick in your mind for a very long time.
6/10
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