Assassinos de Aluguel

In New York, three smalltime hoodlums are arrested and years later they become NYPD officers. When they are celebrating in a bar, Captain Joe Sarcone (Robert De Niro) summons Jonas "Malo" Maldonado (50 Cent) to sit at his table. Sarcose was the partner of Malo's deceased father and he invites Malo to join his team of corrupt cops. The rookie Malo teams up with the dirty Dennis LaRue (Forest Whitaker) and he begins his career of crime in the police department. But when his former trainer Lydia Vecchio (Dana Delany), whose husband worked at the Internal Affairs when he was murdered, shows evidences of his father's death to him, Malo returns to the side of the law to seek revenge against those that killed his father.

"Freelancers" is a movie with a messy story about corrupt NYPD officers. The lead character is a hoodlum that becomes a dirty cop, but comes back to the side of the law to revenge the death of his father and ends invited to join the Internal Affairs. Lydia has conclusive evidences against Sarcose and his gang, but they are not enough to arrest the dirty cop that is not under surveillance. The great cast is lost in a poor screenplay and a weak direction. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Assassinos de Aluguel" ("Hired Killers")

Has great cast and what should have been a great movie, well wasn't. Felt forced and nothing really surprising. 3 teenagers who were arrested are set free and become cops. There was nothing unique about this movie. Cop turns bad who gets worse who wants to redeem his life.

50 cent plays the main character who is a criminal on the outside with a honest person trying to get out. Seems every step forward requires him to take 2 steps to the wrong side of the law of which he is more then willing to do. I guess they were hoping 50 cent would help this film, but to me he just doesn't have it and looks like a fish out of water still.

Not the worst movie I have seen.

In all fairness and truth, I was quite liking the movie at first. By all means this should had been one that would had been bad to watch from start to finish and one that I should have hated watching, since it stars Oscar winning actors Robert De Niro and Forest Whitaker opposite 50 Cent and Vinnie Jones. All alarm bells should go off when you hear this, especially when you learn that 50 Cent is playing the lead role. But in fact, the movie isn't being all that bad to watch and its first half especially makes this a decent enough, little, genre movie.

The first half of the movie is basically one about rookie training, in which rookie cops, one of them played by 50 Cent, get teamed up with an older and more experienced cop, who starts learning them the tricks and ropes. It all sounds very familiar, I know but it does work out interesting and entertaining enough and I was ready to really start liking this movie.

But then its horrible second half came along. Half way through it suddenly becomes a far more standard crime movie and not a very good one I'm sad to say. About half way through, exactly, there is a certain scene in the movie after which the movie starts to take a turn for the worse. The scene in itself already is being something ridicules and out of tone for this movie but everything that follows after that is about just as bad and silly. Suddenly 50 Cent and friends become hardcore crime fighters, trying to solve a case, which also involves dirty cops, while before that they were being naive and timid young cops, afraid of their superiors. It doesn't quite click all and the second half almost entirely ruined the movie for me.

It might seem strange to you, seeing 50 Cent playing a cop in this but it in fact is not a movie that glorifies the police corps at all. On the contrary really, since the cops are the biggest bad guys in this, who also form the biggest danger, do most of the drugs and have sex with prostitutes, whenever given the opportunity, all while being on duty. No, I don't think the makers of this movie have a lot of love for the police man and woman out there and 50 Cent also quickly finds an excuse in this movie to take off his uniform. It's a bit too over-the-top all at times, which obviously doesn't make this the most convincing and realistic genre movie out there.

I have always thought that 50 Cent is an horrible actor. He's even terrible in his own music videos! Now, I'm not talking about him as a performer of course but he, out of all rappers, always seemed to be the most unlikely one to ever have a decent acting career some day. Guess movies like this won't really help his acting career forward, since he also really isn't being all that impressive in this. He especially has some real difficulties in the scenes in which his character was supposed to show his emotions. And watching him sitting across Robert De Niro, having dialog with him, feels just wrong! They are not remotely in the same league and I was also quite surprised to see the likes of De Niro and Whitaker in this.

It's definitely not the worst movie you'll ever see but it's not one to get very excited about either.

5/10

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This movie is an overall quite entertaining and mostly fast paced action thriller that though lacks of depth. The story simply features too many stereotypes and is therefor sometimes even mildly amusing even if this surely wasn't the intention of the makers of this b-movie.

The film is about three crooks that get out of prison and get to work in the corrupt New York City Police Department. Soon, they get involved in the local crime scene and must learn how to survive in tough circumstances where nobody's left whom they can trust in. At the same time, the main character portrayed by a weak but not completely bad Curtis James Jackson III wants to resolve the secret of his father's assassination that he witnessed as a child.

The problem with this movie is that it almost has no clear guiding line and some events happen without any logical reason whatsoever. Sometimes, the characters rapidly change their moods and appear almost schizophrenic which is very odd. Apart of a slightly stronger and even quite entertaining ending, at least three quarters of the movie go straight to nowhere or are highly predictable. Most of the actors and especially the cop roles are simply not credible at all and even happen to be quite ridiculous. Sometimes, the movie just feels like a longer 50 Cent video clip with senseless violence, gratuitous sex, a very minimalistic story line and some cameo appearances by a couple of good actors such as the strong Robert De Niro or the now deceased and surprisingly convincing actor Pedro Armendáriz Junior where one ends up asking oneself why these gifted guys are starring in such a bad movie.

In the end, there isn't much interest in watching this film. Especially the story is quite random and predictable. The low budget flick features almost more shots of nocturnal New York City every ten minutes that are taken from a plain than gripping action or suspense scenes. The only reason to watch this flick are the solid appearances of Robert De Niro as well as Pedro Armendáriz Junior or if you simply are a big fan of 50 Cent. Objectively seen, his acting is of a rather average quality and lacks of emotion and quality but he surely has a quite cool image and mostly promotes himself and his music in this movie. You can grab this flick at a cheap price for a loan if you have not much else to do and want to switch your brain off for one hour and a half but apart of that there definitely isn't much in this.

Without any real success or box office backing Curtis "50" Cent Jackson has still managed to churn out a film career, with most of in straight to video action films. This time though he has aligned himself with some big star power in the form of Robert DeNiro and Forest Whitaker, but is it enough to deliver that extra punch to step this cop thriller or will it just be another forgettable addition to the genre?

Freelancers follow a young cop who joins in with a group of rogue cops led by his father's ex-partner. When the truth about his father's death is revealed it pushes him to finally make sure justice is served. This isn't a bad movie, but it isn't anything different than every other cop movie that has come along over the years. Jackson does a decent job here, but just doesn't have the chops to really sell the emotional aspect of the character. He works well for the action, but as soon as he has to deliver some sort of emotion it just comes off non-existent. Whitaker and DeNiro both pretty much phone this one in, but thanks to their amazing talent still manage to deliver some interesting characters. The story is pretty straight forward, but wants to try and deliver twists and turns where it is pretty obvious as to where it is all headed. In addition there are some aspects of the story that just come off a bit unbelievable in the system. There's some decent action moments here but nothing that really stands out to help push this along.

Overall this is a pretty generic delivery into the cop thriller, but thanks to the star power behind it at least feels a bit bigger than the straight to video release it got. If you are a fan of this genre or any of those involved give it a try, just don't expect anything all that new or original.

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