Jogos do Crime

Samuel Jackson shows off his acting chops in this gritty action thriller, with supporting actors doing a great job. He plays a man fresh out of prison after twenty five years who wants to go straight, but as it's mentioned in the movie, cons always say that at first. His past catches up to him in a huge way. Sure, we've seen plenty of this before, but the action moves right along with suitably dark sets and mood music to accompany all the nifty twists and turns. A nice surprise is young Ruth Negga who more than holds her own with the veterans. All in all a good effort, well worth the time to seek out, especially for Jackson fans.

The plot: An ex-con looking to go straight is blackmailed into one last grift.

I'm a huge sucker for film noir, so it's not like I could pass up a chance at watching a gritty crime thriller with Sam Jackson. I was a bit apprehensive when I saw the critical disdain, but I figured it'd be worth a try. I think some of the critics were a bit harsh, but this isn't really a great movie. There are certainly some good aspects to it, but the aggressively derivative elements really drag down the score. If it had been less of a pastiche (and outright ripoff) of certain movies, this could have been good. Unfortunately, to mention its primary inspiration would be a huge spoiler.

If you're tolerant of "homage", not looking for a unique story, and are a fan of either noir or Sam Jackson, then there's a fair chance that you'll enjoy The Samaritan. I found it quite watchable, but I was not impressed with the directing or writing. The acting, on the other hand, was fine. There are only two or three scenes with Sam Jackson's trademark outbursts of angry yelling, so you might want to load up Pulp Fiction again if that's what you're looking for.

Any true Sam Jackson fan has sat through some really terrible movies. This is nowhere near the bottom, but it's somewhat frustrating in that you can see how this could have been a good movie if they'd tried a little harder.

The background music far too loud to hear the mumbled dialogue in many scenes. Plus the background music is horrible, often vibrating in my head completely distracting me from the dialogue. The plot is disjointed and barely believable, yet predicable. The grift twists were not believable, in fact the grift itself was too simple to be realistic. Too many scenes are in the dark or weird yellow light. The 'surgeon' must been absolutely brilliant to work in the dim yellow light of his room. It's very hard to say more about this movie as it was pretty much a yawning waste of ninety minutes. Samuel L Jackson is an excellent actor, I'm a fan but I'm surprised he made this movie. The English actor/master criminal Tom Wilkinson wasn't believable, he looked more like a merchant banker. Very disappointing.

I started to watch this film not really knowing what I was going into, I had watched the trailer and it looked good, but I didn't expect all the twists!

Samuel L Jackson is one of my favourite actors and he definitely delivers in this film, as do the rest of the actors.

It may not be everyone's cup of tea but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and if you like films of this genre then you should enjoy it too. There were a few bits of the film that I guess weren't explored far enough (for me anyway, I pay too much attention to detail perhaps) but all in all I enjoyed it enough to want to watch it again sometime in the future.

After seeing "Meeting evil", I was concerned this was another dud for Samuel Jackson. He always gives a great performance, but the story isn't always up to par. I had never heard of this movie so I had lower than low expectations. Wow, I was pleasantly surprised. Shocking twists and turns kept me interested from beginning to end. I don't want to give a synopsis because I think it's better if you go in green like I did. But now I'm struggling to fill 10 lines without any spoilers. Glad I didn't check the reviews on IMDb else I would have never would have rented it. The 5.5 is totally undeserved, but I understand it. Many judge movies based on how many explosions and CGI it contains. And I've never seen Oldboy so it didn't feel like a remake. Bottom line, this is a great drama and all the characters are believable.