Empire State

The story has a very nice and potential background as its base. But it turned out that the movie didn't really took advantage of this in the development and execution. The opening looks quite nice with the back and forth flow of the story, starting the story near the ending point, and the quick story buildup between the start and the conflict revelation. But then it plunges into mediocrity, and quite honestly boredom, since the movie decreased its speed significantly and let the drama and investigation set in more dominantly. The action also don't take long when they happen. Too much use of close up angles combined with the very quick camera movement with less shot accuracy takes precious split seconds at those sequences to refocus on what we are viewing.The acting seems just a standard job in overall. It's a bad surprise considering the potentials of Dwayne Johnson and Liam Hemsworth.

Suitable for late night television only. Too slow and too boring. Don't pay money to watch this. There's a lot of potential, though. The story is actually quite interesting and the acting is not half bad. However, the potential is never unleashed, unfortunately.

I gave up on this flick when I noticed that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was wearing a brand new, present day digital Casio G-Shock watch. He was wearing it throughout the entire movie, although the story is set in the eighties, more than 30 years ago!

This little flaw illustrates the ambitions of both the actor, the crew, the director and also the overall quality of the movie very well, in my opinion.

I'm a fan of real stories turned into movie when they revolve about an epic robbery and those robbed aren't worth of pity. This seemed to fit the genre. I didn't know what to expect from this, but the Rock is in it, so I thought, at least will be entertaining as he is the quintessential hero.

The film is not dreadful, but it is kinda mediocre. Bad direction, bad production, mediocre acting, poor dialogues, bad tempo, lack of climax, lack of tension, lack of humour, lack of proper drama, lack of everything that makes this sort of movie interesting.

The movie is supposed to happen in the 1980s, but it looks more like the 70s, regarding, dress style, make up, hair, and overall looks. If you don't get something as basic right, how do you pretend us to believe the rest?

The acting is uneven. The Rock underwhelms here, probably because the role doesn't suit his style, and he is not a proper actor, but more an action hero and I am OK when he does those sort of movies. Liam Hemsworth has potential, but he needs a bit of time off and focus on developing himself as an actor, because his lack of dramatic register was painful to watch here and not even the accent was believable; he is miscast here, and the film doesn't make him any favor or push his career forward, quite the contrary. Three people stand out to me in this film: Arangano as the most annoying Eddie, Ben-Victor as the good Chris' father, and Rispoli as the normal-guy Toni. Other supporting actors are OK in their respective roles as not much is expected from them and they are stereotypical baddies.

It is a pity that despite the story being really interesting a priori, this people wasted millions of dollars to produce a B movie. If I had had to pay for this, I would be furious.

If a movie doesn't entertain you, doesn't make you laugh, doesn't move you, doesn't have a decent settings, or the right actors for the characters, well, why bother?

This is based upon a true story.

Chris (Liam Hemsworth) takes a security job with Empire - a security company with armored trucks that went around NYC collecting money from businesses - after being rejected by New York Police Academy. Chris tells his friend Eddie (Michael Angarano) how lax the security is at Empire and he gets involved in one of the biggest heists in New York history.

Eddie is a small time crook and after watching this movie he is also a big time pain in the butt. I don't think I ever saw a character so devoid of common sense and manners until now. So I guess Michael Angarano did a good job of it. Still, that was annoying. One may say if it wasn't for Eddie there would have been no robbery.

Once the robbery is announced the police suspect the Mob families and they (the Mob) want to know who did this on their turf. This could have been dragged out more but it wasn't. Pity, as this could have had some humorous moments.

Here's the thing: The money was never found, and was about $8-million which was half the amount robbed. The other half went to the local drug lord and was confiscated by the police.

The pacing is good. There was good acting all around. You see everything, but still the other half of the money was not found. However, Chris did tell waitress Nancy (Emma Roberts) where the money was, but nothing ever came of it. Or did it? Hmmmm……………….. You will have to draw your own conclusions here as there is nothing left to go on. No one is talking. Well, maybe we didn't see everything.

Dwayne Johnson as Detective Ransome performed well and had his suspicions of who was involved in the heist.(5/10)

Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: Yes, much.

(Credit IMDb) A drama centered on two childhood friends who plan to rob an armored car depository, and the NYPD officer who stands in their way.

I've seen a lot worse when it comes to STD movies, but this just wasn't all that interesting in the whole scheme of things. For a true story, you would think more effort would be necessary. My main problem with Empire State is how bland it is. It doesn't have that much action what so ever, and it lacks the emotional punch needed for a film of this magnitude, and the cast just simply isn't up for the challenge. I garnered no emotional stimulus between Chris (Liam Hemsworth) & Michael Angarano (Eddie) because not only did the film not make me care about their fates, but their performances were rather poor. Liam Hemsworth is not lead material, and made for a very boring lead. He also felt miscast, and forced in the lead role. Michael Angarano isn't much better. He grated my nerves with his wise-ass character, and I felt like smacking that smug look off his face. His chemistry with Hemsworth was off as well. Dwayne Johnson is criminally wasted in this movie as a detective. Whenever he appeared on screen, my interest level was raised significantly, but that was much too seldom for my liking. He was far too good to have such a small part in this movie. Emma Roberts is barely in this movie, aside from a few pointless scenes. We get scattered clips in the beginning and the end of the real life events that took place, but it didn't matter much to me.

Final Thoughts: A rather mundane account of a true story. I'm not gonna tell you to avoid it, but don't expect riveting entertainment. It's not a very good movie, and it went straight to DVD for a reason.

4/10.