1992

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.

I just got done watching 1992 (2024) and I liked it a lot. This is also another win for Lionsgate in 2024.

Positives for 1992 (2024): First off, I've gotta give props to Tyrese Gibson for his performance in this movie as it's one of the few less comedic performances in his career. I do enjoy Tyrese as Roman from the Fast and Furious Franchise, but it was nice to see him do something different from his usual shtick. I also really enjoyed both Ray Liotta (RIP) and Scott Eastwood in this movie. It was actually very interesting to see a movie that explores the Rodney King riots during that time. And finally, there are some decent action sequences in the movie.

Negatives for 1992 (2024): The movie doesn't really do a deep dive into the Rodney King riots and that's coming from someone who doesn't have a lot of knowledge about that. Also, the movie feels a little bit generic with its execution, but that's something to expect from a Lionsgate movie.

Overall, 1992 (2024) is a great little action thriller with some great performance that is held back by its execution at times, but I'm still recommending this movie for anyone who watches to see the last on screen performance by Ray Liotta.

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.

1992 is worth watching if you like heist/action movies. It's also Ray Liotta's last movie ever as he sadly passed away since then. So as a homage to him it's also worth watching. Tyrese Gibson plays the righteous defender of morals and Scott Eastwood the son of Ray Liotta, a small time crook trying to score a life-changing big hit. Scott Eastwood is the son of the legendary Clint Eastwood, and there's absolutely no doubt about that as he's the spitting image of his father. Not yet the same charisma though but good enough to be believable. It's an entertaining heist movie, not flawless but in this genre you can't be too picky.