1992 Noche Sin Ley

Ray Liotta makes his cinematic curtain call in Ariel Vroeman's 1992, but it's a sadly superficial stock villain in a mediocre thriller that doesn't say or do much for the actor, who leaves a towering legacy behind him. In the violent mess of the Rodney King riots, single father Mercer (Tyrese Gibson) attempts to hide out with his teenage son at his workplace, a metalworks factory, during the chaos as it's in a much safer neighbourhood than his own. Of course it's an out of the frying pan into the cat and mouse situation as this just happens to be the night when vicious ex-con Lowell (Liotta) and his two sons (Scott Eastwood & Dylan Arnold) decide to rob the place, using the fact that most of the city's cops are distracted by the riots as cover. Cue a dimly lit parade of yelling, standoffs, shootouts, uninspired dialogue and thinly drawn characters facing off towards an eventual conclusion where lots of them get shot. It's almost comical how the script attempts tiny bits of social commentary regarding the riots and that infamous verdict before *immediately* getting distracted again by pedestrian thriller elements. Liotta is his typecasted self here: angry, volatile, scary and fired up, he doesn't get to do much else or display any depth beyond surface level menace, and it's unfortunate. The same can be said for the film overall, wherein a bit of atmospheric tension and feverish energy is mounted with the riot backdrop, before sinking disappointingly into the run of the mill conflict at the factory.

Israeli director Ariel Vromen brings us a thriller with plenty of drama in a film that has some very intense moments, but they are not enough to give us a much more well-rounded film as we sometimes hoped for.

The script written by Sascha Penn manages to have moments of social drama that really manage to be a high point in the film and perhaps largely compensate for the weaker moments that the film experiences once it leans exclusively towards action that fails to reach a level that manages to give you the intensity of those more ghetto moments that feel precisely well done.

An efficient cast that gives us the posthumous appearance of the beloved Ray Liotta and a Scott Eastwood alongside Tyrese Gibson, who already know how to give us action on screen and continue to deliver in those moments when they provide it.

We find ourselves as spectators in a story where there are shootouts, a car chase, some heroism and some hard life lessons that invite us to have a good film that has its pleasant moments and those moments allow the film in general to come out acceptable and perhaps appreciated for its parts of social drama that really invite reflection.

Afterward we are left with a mixture of sensations where the film could have been much more complete than what we ended up receiving, which ends up deflating towards its final part, which leaves us with the bitter feeling that it had much more to give us.

Either that or they're in need of seriously broadening their horizons.

10 stars? Calling it a "Perfect" film?

To rank this alongside The Godfather, Schindler's List, Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, Apocalypse Now or even The Lord Of The Rings is the equivalent of walking into Mordor and we know that "one does not simply walk into..." I digress.

Let's talk about this latest effort by Ariel Vroman to convince us that he is a serious film-maker.

After delivering a blistering array of career low films for Costner and Oldman (Criminal), Marisa Tomei (Danika) and the thrilless Toby Kebbel (Angel) we have finally been given the long delayed 1992.

Vromen has turned his attention to a historically and culturally significant moment in Angelino lives, April 29th 1992 and delivered what can only be described as screen flatulence in the form of a weak heist film that all but ignores the gravitas of its setting entirely.

A younger cast is meant to give us the impression that this is a vibrant, fresh take on a well trodden path, but Gibson and Eastwood do their best with a pedestrian and predictable script, whilst the late, great Ray Liotta is buried ignominiously with the lines "I did the best that I could son. But it wasn't enough".

And it isn't enough. Not enough thrills, invention, originality, style, character, humor, depth or even sense. Convoluted at times and blunt to a fault at others, this is yet another ham-fisted effort to waste our time, some poor investor's money and the goodwill of all the people roped into making accounts just to give it 10 stars, all in the vain hope that we might mix Vromen in with his Israeli counterparts; but Avi Nesher, Amos Gitai and Joseph Cedar he is not, unfortunately he's not even in the Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus league as whatever we may think, they at least found an audience.

And this the main issue with 1992. Who is it for? Fast and Furious polish without the camp over the top action, Goodfellas violence without the gritty impact and Hip Hop sentiment but with a vanilla milkshake to wash it down.

1992 tries to be all things to all people and comes up short every time. Too slight yet too garish, it somehow manages to fall in that most terrible place, the absolute middle.

You want a heist movie with a crazy backdrop take your pick from The Italian Job (1968) or Heat (1995). If you want something closer to 10 stars grab The Usual Suspects. But whatever you do, save this film for when you've seen all the rest.

I feel like Tyrese is becoming complacent. Listening to him from one interview to the next, he comes across as someone who feels he's achieved a lot and should be revered for it. While he's undeniably an amazing singer, as an actor, I think he's just okay and got lucky with *Fast & Furious*, heavily relying on the strength of the supporting cast.

I've always been a fan of Scott Eastwood, son of the legendary Clint Eastwood, and you can never go wrong with the always brilliant Ray Liotta (RIP), who delivered a strong performance in this movie. His presence kept me engaged right until the end.

As for the script, it's clever, but the execution felt a bit second-rate. Then again, that's often what you get with a B movie. It's not great, but it's not terrible either.

1992

I wasn't sure what to expect when I sat down to watch a movie set during the LA riots after the ridiculous non guilty verdict delivered to the cops who beat Rodney King on camera. 1992's main character is a man who had been out of prison for 6 months for an undisclosed crime, but related to gang violence. He has a 16 year old son that lives with him due to the deaths of the kid's mother and grandmother.

The twist here is that a group of criminals use the riots as a distraction for their heist of platinum from a plant. For 1992 it's a pretty advanced plot to break into the safe while only one security guard remains. As Ray Liotta's final film before his death, he plays the head of the heist, even though his 2 sons, and one of their war buddies did all the work.

I was glad to see that most of the first half of the movie deals with watching what the riots were doing in the neighborhood. Mercer, no stranger to violence, works to get his son to the same plant being robbed, for safety. The film does elicit the anger that the country felt to see such a miscarriage of justice.

The rest of the film is very Die Hard as Mercer fights against the thieves, as he watches in horror as his son is used as a hostage. It's fun to see Mercer take them out, and then it's fun to see the twist when one of the thieves realizes that the heist was going to far.

The one Black man in their crew is the first casualty when a forklift causes the amputation of his legs. The irony is not lost not he audience that during the riots, he is hurt by the remaining white crew, though unintentionally.

It's not a fantastic movie, though Tyrese Gibson (Mercer) does a fantastic job playing a scared father that has an ability, he is not proud of, to defend his family. He also is subject to the humiliation of suffering an incident with the police as he is driving to the plant, all while keeping his cool to avoid escalation. Watching a white family get sent through the barricade with no inspection just ticked me off.

I also wished the ending returned to the repercussions of the riots, but it did wrap up the heist plot. 30 years after the riots, I guess it was inevitable to use a real life event as an identifier of time and motive, but I almost felt it was going to be a more historical drama. But it's not, and I also remembered that the 2018 Black Panther movie did the same thing, at the beginning of the film.