{"id":56802,"date":"2018-01-19T13:51:58","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T21:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=56802"},"modified":"2018-01-19T13:51:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T21:51:58","slug":"quick-takes-forever-girl-dir-bethany-ashton-wolf-2018-den-thieves-dir-christian-gudegast-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2018\/01\/quick-takes-forever-girl-dir-bethany-ashton-wolf-2018-den-thieves-dir-christian-gudegast-2018.html","title":{"rendered":"Quick takes: Forever My Girl<\/i> (dir. Bethany Ashton Wolf, 2018) \/ Den of Thieves<\/i> (dir. Christian Gudegast, 2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"forevermygirl-a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Forever My Girl<\/i><\/b> (USA: PG; BC: G; Ontario: PG)<\/p>\n

Forever My Girl<\/i> has been getting a strong push towards the \u201cfaith-based\u201d market, and it\u2019s not hard to see why: it begins in a church, one of the key characters is a pastor, it\u2019s a prodigal-son story that celebrates small-town life and family values, and it\u2019s the sort of PG-rated movie in which the worst epithet a hardened veteran of the entertainment industry can think to use \u2014 and he won\u2019t use it around his children! \u2014 is \u201cflippin'\u201d. Alas, it\u2019s also a pretty phony movie. The premise of the film is that a country-music star named Liam Page (Rings<\/i>\u2019 Alex Roe) abandoned his bride Josie (Happy Death Day<\/i>\u2019s Jessica Rothe) on their wedding day and spent the next eight years enjoying all the perks and vices of fame, and now \u2014 upon hearing about the death of one of his friends \u2014 he returns to his hometown and discovers that he has a seven-year-old daughter (Ant-Man<\/i>\u2019s Abby Ryder Fortson). The film, adapted by director Bethany Ashton Wolf from Heidi McLaughin\u2019s novel (which I have not read), tries to explain why Liam left Josie and how both he and the world-at-large never learned about the family he left behind (how did<\/i> the tabloids miss that?), but the answers are both too simple and too contrived. Supposedly, Liam left Josie and everyone else because, despite the fact that he never even tried<\/i> to get a music career, he suddenly became famous overnight \u2014 and that\u2019s it? Good films are curious about what makes their characters tick, but this one isn\u2019t: it shows no interest in what there might have been in Liam\u2019s relationship with his neighbours that left him predisposed to abandon them so quickly (I guess a closer look at them might have tarnished the film\u2019s rosy depiction of small-town life), and it doesn\u2019t care at all that the same manager who was arranging one-night stands with groupies at the beginning of the story is also helping Liam patch his family together at the end. And don\u2019t get me started on the super-smart seven-year-old, or the decade-old cell phone that Liam clings to because he doesn\u2019t want to lose a message that Josie left him (I don\u2019t think voicemail works that way\u2026), or the various other odd gaps in the storytelling. \u201cI\u2019m not a fully formed human being,\u201d Liam says at one point, and the same could be said of all the other characters, too.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

\"denofthieves-a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Den of Thieves<\/i><\/b> (USA: R; BC: 14A; Ontario: 14A)<\/p>\n

Den of Thieves<\/i> wants to be Heat<\/i> so bad you can taste it. It\u2019s a cat-and-mouse tale about a gruff bad-boy cop named Nick Flanagan (Gerard Butler) and the criminal he is pursuing, an ex-military guy named Merriman (Pablo Schreiber) who steals an empty armoured car at the beginning of the film and goes on to plot a much, much bigger heist by the end \u2014 and of course, along the way, there are gun battles in the open streets. The collapse of Flanagan\u2019s marriage feels like obligatory character development, but there are other scenes that work pretty well (like the bit where one of Merriman\u2019s associates, played by 50 Cent, intimidates his daughter\u2019s prom date). As with many heist films, there is some pleasure to be had in following the various complicated security measures that the thieves have to work around, and there are a few ironic twists that I wish had played out just a little more bleakly than they do here. I was particularly impressed by Schreiber, who I know primarily from his more comical roles in Orange Is the New Black<\/i> and American Gods<\/i>; here he\u2019s quite credible as a toughened criminal, albeit one who isn\u2019t quite<\/i> as in-control as he seems at first. The film was co-written and directed by Christian Gudegast, who co-wrote another Butler film, the amazingly bad London Has Fallen<\/i>, and suffice it to say, this one may not be great but it\u2019s at least good enough to make up for that one.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forever My Girl<\/i> is family-friendly and phony, while Den of Thieves<\/i> is a decent, if violent, cat-and-mouse heist flick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":56803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4227,4225,4224,4223,4226],"class_list":["post-56802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-bethany-ashton-wolf","tag-christian-gudegast","tag-den-of-thieves","tag-forever-my-girl","tag-pablo-schreiber"],"yoast_head":"\nQuick takes: Forever My Girl (dir. Bethany Ashton Wolf, 2018) \/ Den of Thieves (dir. 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