Oh my goodness the brand new trailer for Creed II is out and it already has us hype for Thanksgiving. The film stars Michael B. Jordan reprising his role from the original Creed as Adonis Creed, son of the legendary Apollo Creed. This time, things are different for Adonis. He’s a champion and he and his girlfriend Bianca, played by Tessa Thompson have a family together. However, Creed II is all about a rivalry four decades in the making: Creed vs. Drago. If you recall in the original Rocky franchise, Creed’s father Apollo was killed by Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren . Well, guess who is opposite Adonis in the ring for his latest superfight? None other than Ivan Drago’s son, Viktor, played by Florian Munteanu . RELATED: ‘Creed II’ + 9 Other Black Films You Should See Before The End Of 2018 RELATED: Tessa Thompson Says Michael B. Jordan’s DMs Are Full Of Women Offering Him Sandwiches Steven Caple Jr. is directing this time, replacing Ryan Coogler who serves as executive producer. Sylvester Stallone reprises his role as Rocky Balboa, his eighth film in the role and the crux of the latest film is the young Creed fighting not only for redemption but his family’s legacy as well. Fight for your destiny one round at a time. #Creed2 pic.twitter.com/QX7pPMpi69 — #CREED2 (@creedmovie) September 25, 2018 Watch the trailer up top. Join Our Text Club To Get The Latest Music, Entertainment, Contests And Breaking News On Your Phone
The sight of Ivan Drago informing you that it’s your turn to be broken would be enough to make anyone lose control of their bladder, but apparently on a recent flight, Dolph Lundgren didn’t even have to utter his famous line from Rocky IV in order to open Matthew Pritchard’s floodgates. That’s Pritchard on the right, moments before he got naked and began running up and down the aisles (seriously) during a flight on which Lundgren was also a passenger. Apparently, Pritchard hosts a prank show called Dirty Sanchez (again, seriously) on MTV UK, but his latest antics were not part of the British version of Punk’d, but were instead the result of a good old fashioned booze and Xanax fueled freakout. “I took a Xanax, which is a sedative that knocks you out, to put me to sleep on the flight,” Pritchard tells the Daily Mail. “I didn’t realise you’re not supposed to mix them with alcohol. I had a lot of alcohol and blacked out.” As you can see, the situation deteriorated rapidly: “I started running up and down the flight naked. And proceeded to pee on Dolph Lundgren’s feet,” Pritchard says, adding that the 6’5″ action star was “none too pleased” but eventually shook his hand and told him “not to worry about it.” Wow. We would’ve imagined the situation ending more along the lines of Pritchard being tossed from the emergency exit with a triumphant Lundgren muttering, “If he dies, he dies,” before returning to his seat and coolly falling asleep with a neck pillow and eye mask. Guess Dolph is a lot more forgiving (albeit, somewhat less cool) than we thought. View Slideshow: 33 Drunk People Who Will Make You Glad You’re Not Them
Not so much a traditional sequel as a hallucinogenic riff on an entire franchise, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning plays like the fevered fantasy of a die-hard genre fan who requires only the haziest sort of dream logic to connect extended sequences of hand-to-hand, foot-to-ass, machete-to-arm and bullet-to-head combat. There’s something perversely fascinating about helmer John Hyams’ freewheeling yet deliberately paced mashup of noirish mystery, splatter-movie intensity, first-person-shooter vidgame and Apocalypse Now -style surrealism. But it’s questionable whether the pic will develop anything larger than a cult following when Magnet unleashes it as a late-fall VOD and theatrical release. Franchise mainstays Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren are back in action as UniSols, genetically enhanced and fantastically resilient bionic commandos. But they serve more or less as supporting players here, while most of Day of Reckoning focuses on Brit martial artist/action-pic thesp Scott Adkins as John, a fuzzily defined family man who awakens from a nine-month coma with jumbled memories of having witnessed brutal home invaders kill his wife and young daughter. Left with amnesia, John remembers only one thing with vivid clarity: The leader of the killers was a fearsome fellow identified by a helpful FBI agent (Rus Blackwell) as Luc Devereaux (Van Damme). Devereaux, the agent explains while questioning John, used to work for the government, and now is classified as a deserter. But Devereaux himself more likely would call himself a messiah. With the help of comrade Andrew Scott (Lundgren), the seemingly indestructible special op has been methodically recruiting and deprogramming other UniSols, freeing them of control by government-employed overlords and readying them for revenge. John repeatedly encounters an especially ferocious deprogrammed UniSol (Andrei Arlovski) while following a trail of clues that might lead to info about Devereaux — and, just as important, about John’s own forgotten past. Of course, this being a genre pic, that trail brings him to a topless bar, where he meets a beautiful dancer (Mariah Bonner) who claims to know him. Then things get really weird. Hyams and co-scripters Doug Magnuson and Jon Greenhalgh reference a wide range of sources throughout, with Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now being only their most obvious influences. (That Van Damme is made to resemble a leaner, meaner Col. Kurtz certainly isn’t coincidental.) There’s also a plot twist on loan from a classic Twilight Zone segment in which George Grizzard played another man trying to solve the puzzle of his past. To their credit, however, the filmmakers make mostly clever use of their borrowings, and they play fair: That surprise twist is signaled early on by clues hidden in plain sight. In any event, the twisty storyline serves primarily as an excuse to get the aud from one long stretch of mayhem to the next. Adkins may not be the most emotionally expressive of actors, but his formidable physicality serves him well during impressive action scenes that are additionally enhanced by the extra depth of field provided by 3D lensing. The grand finale is a series of what appear to be single-take sequences of bone-breaking, bullet-blasting violence, almost all of it presented with a practical-effects, minimal-CGI approach bound to impress genre devotees. Better still, the climax allows Lundgren to exuberantly deliver a line that, in this context, comes off as the pic’s only moment of comic relief. Even in their limited screen time, Lundgren and Van Damme demonstrate that you can teach old dogs new kicks. Other supporting players, including Arlovski, a Belarusian mixed-martial-arts champ, are adequate to the tasks at hand. For the record, Day of Reckoning is the fourth pic in a series that began with 1992’s Universal Soldier (directed by Roland Emmerich), and continued with Universal Soldier: The Return (1999) and Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009), which was also directed by Hyams and went direct to video in the U.S. There were two unrelated cable spinoffs ( Universal Solider II: Brothers in Arms and Universal Solider III: Unfinished Business , both toplining Matt Battaglia) that have evidently joined the ranks of Exorcist II: The Heretic ,” Jaws 3-D and just about every Halloween pic between Halloween II and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later as sequels that true fans like to pretend never existed. Related: Check out Movieline’s Fantastic Fest Review of Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning Follow Movieline on Twitter.
In what may be one of the most inspired cross-promotion deals of the year, Deadline reports that Warner Bros. and WWE Studios will team up to produce a Scooby-Doo animated feature in which the Mystery Inc. team investigates strange goings-on at Wrestlemania. (Now, that’s a loaded premise.) WWE personalities Triple H, John Cena, Kane , The Miz and WWE CEO Vince McMahon will be among those lending their voices to the production, and it occurred to me that not only will their cartoonish on-air personalities lend themselves well to animation,. but that a number of the classic Scooby-Doo villains would make memorable WWE Wrestlers. Tell me that the Phantom Puppeteer was not a proto-Undertaker, or that Big Show and the Wax Phantom are not brothers from another mother. With that in mind, I invite you Scooby lovers out there to choose which classic Scooby-Doo,Where Are You! villain below would make the best WWE Wrestler. If you’re one of those meddling-kid types who thinks the best choice is not on the list, leave him or her in the comments section. Take Our Poll Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Appearances can be deceiving, and as audiences learn in Friday’s testosterone-fueled sequel The Expendables 2 , even Dolph Lundgren ‘s volatile Gunnar Jensen has a few surprising secrets to share. Such as: In addition to being a habitual alcoholic and reformed-but-unpredictable member of the squad, Gunnar’s revealed to be a chemical engineering savant and former Fulbright scholar — elements cheekily borrowed from Lundgren’s real life. Long before the veteran of Rocky IV , Red Scorpion , Universal Soldier and, yes, Masters of the Universe earned his reputation as an imposing fixture in the ’80s and ’90s action realm, Lundgren was a decorated student who followed his economist-engineer father into the sciences and earned a master’s degree in chemical engineering. A chance meeting with singer Grace Jones sparked his Hollywood aspirations; shortly after making his debut in A View To A Kill , 1985’s Rocky IV and the memorable Russian boxer Ivan Drago marked Lundgren’s big break, catapulting him to fame alongside fellow icons stars Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (who team up to defeat the dastardly Jean-Claude Van Damme in Expendables 2 ). As the golden age of the beefy, brawny action star waned, however, Lundgren turned increasingly to direct-to-DVD fare, but these days Lundgren is content with how things turned out: “I got married, had two kids, brought them up in Europe, got divorced, came back here again, and the kids are okay — they didn’t become victims of Hollywood or anything, so that feels good too.” Later this year the 54-year-old actor (who also writes, produces, and directs) will follow Expendables 2 with another high profile return to his roots, of sorts, in the 3-D sequel Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning . And while the bulk of his upcoming slate remains firmly in action territory, Lundgren’s turn in Jonas Akerlund’s indie Small Apartments marks another surprise move from the erstwhile Ivan Drago. Read on as Lundgren discusses his evolving image, how art imitates life in The Expendables 2 , his mixed feelings about notorious bomb Masters of the Universe (and its forthcoming live-action remake), and why he left a career in science behind for acting in the first place. In this sequel we learn that Gunnar is a oneime Fullbright scholar and has an advanced degree in chemical engineering, as you do in real life. When Sly first suggested writing elements of your life and background into Expendables 2 , what was your reaction? I laughed, you know, I thought it was funny. Only Stallone could think of stuff like that! I mean, I couldn’t have thought of it. I would have thought, “Nah, that’s too on the nose.” I would have thought of something fictitious, but he’s clever because he knows that people are interested in that, ‘cause he’s probably heard people ask me in press conferences, “Well, aren’t you like a chemical engineer or something?” So he brought that into the movie. How did people first react when they found out about your scholarly background? Did it take a while for people to realize it? It’s still not out there. It’ll come out a little bit with this film. But you know, when you do cinema it’s such a strong medium, it overshadows your real personality. If you play a very nice guy, lover, hero on screen but you’re an asshole in real life, it takes a long time for that to overshadow your screen persona; it maybe never will. In my case it may be a bit of the opposite — I play this brutal kind of one-dimensional, two-dimensional character so if you have other things in your real life it’s gonna take a while [to come out]. It’s just happened very quickly the last couple years that people are starting to catch on to it. Thanks to the internet. The internet, people read up on it. It’s such a hard climate now. Very few people would have time in their lives [to study] and have to go for acting straight away that to spend seven, eight years in academia would be a waste. You have one of those legendary Hollywood discovery stories. Looking back, do you feel like you sort of fell into acting? Fell into acting, well I did. I acted when I was younger but then my dad was an engineer so I started doing engineering and then I kind of fell back into it. I think a lot of it was because I had unresolved issues from when I was a kid and I wanted to be in something where you can emote, rather than just shaking test tubes and looking at dials. Not so much emoting in the sciences, is there? Not so much emoting in science, none. [Laughs] Just discussion, but it’s fun. I miss a little bit of it when you’re discussing intellectual matters. I don’t suppose there was much of that happening on this set? Not that much, but if you’re directing — I directed smaller movies — it’s a bit more like that, because you’re talking to the technical people. You’re talking to the composer and the editor and you have to be multitasking a little more. Roger Ebert once described your Universal Soldier character as a thankless kind of role for an actor. Ivan Drago, on the other hand, might have been one of your best. What do you think? I think Ivan Drago was a great character because he was a victim. I think that of all those characters I did earlier were kind of brutal and didn’t say anything, but [Ivan] was kind of the best because he was very charismatic and people cared about him. If you take, for instance, Clubber Lang in Rocky III , it was interesting but you have no sympathy for him. He was someone who just got beat, and you just felt great. Good for Rocky, he kicked that guy’s ass. But with Ivan Drago I think some people felt, “Awww, poor guy. They just used him, he’s actually not such a bad guy!” It wasn’t his fault! Have you felt over the years more interest from your fans to see more dimension in the characters you play? Yeah I think so, you feel that. But I always didn’t push it cause I know you can’t push it, and it wasn’t like I was dying to show it and my life would be nothing if I couldn’t show people who I really was. But now it’s happening on its own and it feels pretty good. I caught your performance in Jonas Akerlund’s Small Apartments , for example. Small Apartments was crazy, like a zany like Jerry Lewis type of a thing… Are you tempted to branch out more in that kind of way, with more daring or unexpected indie material and iconoclast directors? Yeah, I have some other ones I’ve done that are not out yet. There’s one I’m doing this fall called Without You I’m Nothing which is a drama about a girl who comes to L.A. to become a stripper. It’s written by the lead actress and there’s a good role in that, kind of like a crime boss, but he’s an interesting, mercurial type of a guy. So that’s dramatic, there’s no action. I don’t kill anybody. When you look back on your career and the ups and downs you’ve had over the years, what’s your perspective on where you’ve ended up and how you’ve gotten here? I feel pretty good about where I am now. In my way I feel like it’s a new beginning somehow, I don’t feel burnt out. I don’t feel like people know me. I feel like I’ve managed to keep sort of a mystery so that even though I haven’t accomplished what a lot of people have accomplished at my age, I still feel like it wouldn’t have worked for me because I wasn’t mature enough to handle it. Now I feel more ready to do other things so I’m pretty excited about the future. I’m glad the path went in that direction because also I got married, had two kids, brought them up in Europe, got divorced, came back here again, the kids are okay they didn’t become victims of Hollywood or anything, so that feels good too. Your life story would make quite the interesting biopic… Well I hope I’m still like halfway through it! Finding someone to play that role, that’s a tough one. It’s been announced that they’re moving forward with the remake of Masters of the Universe . What are your memories from making the original, and given that it notoriously flopped are yours fond memories of that project? There are some semi-fond memories because I had just done Rocky IV and became very well known worldwide, even though I didn’t know what that meant and it was very hard for me to deal with it. [ Masters of the Universe ] was my next picture after being the Russian bad guy. I was now kind of the American hero and it was like, “Whoa okay, let me see now how do I do this.” And I broke up with Grace [Jones] at that time, my girlfriend, so it was a hard time for me. My manager — I had to fire a bunch of people that were stealing from me. So it was a good memory in one way, on a professional level, because it was a fun movie and it’s one of the few movies my kids have seen because they’re small and it’s like a PG kids movie. But on a personal level I remember I was a little bit unhappy in life and other stuff. What advice would you give the people who are making the Masters of the Universe reboot ? Gosh, I don’t know. I thought about that for a second when I read it. Which way are they going to take it — superhero, really violent, CGI-driven? Or if they’re going to do more of a kids thing like Wizard of Oz , sweeter, I don’t know… Would you go back and turn in a cameo if they asked? [Laughs] If I’m gonna do anything in that movie, I’m gonna keep my shirt on . 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To even describe The Expendables 2 as a movie seems to do both the medium and this strange, smirking effort a disservice. It isn’t a movie — it’s more like the world’s most expensive, elaborate viral video, making a detour to the big screen before being broken up into more easily consumable segments to be consumed on YouTube. 2010’s The Expendables , directed by its star Sylvester Stallone , was built around the meta-joke of its cast being a who’s who of past and current action stars, particularly ones associated with the more iconic of ’80s muscle movies. But it also had characters with rough personality designations, it had settings and a plot that actually crescendoed toward its violent conclusion. Helmed by Con Air ‘s Simon West, The Expendables 2 has none of these things. Instead, what it has is Chuck Norris making a cameo as a character named Booker (a hat tip to Good Guys Wear Black ) to shoot a few dudes and then recount a Chuck Norris fact (it involves a king cobra). It has Arnold Schwarzenegger, who also briefly appeared in the first film, showing up to joke about being back and terminating people, and ending a bickering session with Bruce Willis by muttering “Yippee-ki-yay.” Whatever throwback charm the first film had has been utterly Snakes on a Plane -d by this sequel, which from the start is far more pleased with itself than audience members are ever given a chance to be. So Stallone is back as Barney Ross, leader of the mercenary group of the title, who’ve become (with one key exception) hammily invincible in the time since the last film ended. Along with his bantering best bud Lee Christmas ( Jason Statham ), Ross heads his team up on a mission to rescue a Chinese billionaire in the opening scene, a sequence that turns into an orgy of automatic weapon fire, armored vehicles smashing through walls and a chase that eventual takes to the water, no element of which sustains even the illusion of putting the preening main characters in harm’s way. If you’ve been in the game this long, it seems, you no longer need to even pretend you could get shot by those extras gamely firing blanks. Dolph Lundgren is still on board as Gunner Jensen, gone from turncoat to comic relief, while Jet Li has a fight scene or two before making a shrug of an exit. Terry Crews and Randy Couture are given little to do other than flex their biceps and fill in the background in this iteration. And Liam Hemsworth shows up as the new team sniper, whose place as “the kid” in a film that’s all about decidedly grown (and slightly creaky) men suggests he’s in a position of peril even before he ends up taking one last gig before retiring to start a new life with his girl. The Expendables are given a mission by Willis’ CIA agent Mr. Church, and head off to retrieve a valuable object from a downed plane at the direction of token female Maggie (Yu Nan), a motorcycle-riding Chinese agent who charms Ross with her ability to efficiently torture information out of informants. When the plan goes awry, Ross and company set out for revenge, targeting a swaggering villain who’s actually named Vilain, and who’s played by a scene-chewing Jean-Claude Van Damme in sunglasses, a duster and a Satanic neck tattoo. In an age of overabundance of CGI, in which neither physical presence nor prowess is required to take the lead in an action film, the appeal of something like The Expendables is clear. Stallone and his buddies aren’t just waving the banner of nostalgia, they’re a stand-in for practical effects and martial arts training, for being able to hold the camera with bulk and charisma (if not necessarily acting range) while delivery cheesy one-liners with a dearth of irony. They represent an outmoded form of the blockbuster, one that’s become replaced by something even more slick, calculated and forgettable — consider the new Total Recall versus the feature on which it was based, the remake a film in which everything is possible and yet nothing seems to matter. The longing for more tangible entertainments is what makes The Expendables 2 feel so damnably lazy — it trades on the quirk of being able to assemble cast-members who’ve devalued enough over the years to become affordable in a single movie, and then barely bothers to actually make that movie. It’s not a joyless effort, but it’s one in which (with the exception of the always admirably present Statham) most of the joy feels self-directed — just a group of guys pounding each other on the back between takes and reassuring themselves that they’ve still got it. Maybe they do, but there’s little evidence of the fact on screen here, in this smug attempt to power a franchise on novelty value alone. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
It’s not always excellent being Bill — or Ted, for that matter. I n a Q & A interview with GQ magazine , Keanu Reeves divulges the core of the plotline to a possible sequel to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure , and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. “We have a nice story. We’ll see if anyone wants to make it,” Reeves says, explaining that “One of the plot points is that these two people have been crushed by the responsibility of having to write the greatest song ever written and to change the world. And they haven’t done it. So everybody is kind of like:’Where is the song?'” Reeves adds: “The guys have just drifted off into esoterica and lost their rock. And we go on this expedition, go into the future to find out if we wrote the song, and one future ‘us’ refuses to tell us, and another future ‘us’ blames us for their lives because we didn’t write the song, so they’re living this terrible life. In one version we’re in jail; in another we’re at some kind of highway motel and they hate us.” Whoa, dude! That’s some heavy “All-We-Are-Is-Dust-in-the-Wind” thinking, although Reeves, who turns 48 in September, tells the publication that he has been contemplating middle age. “My knees are well aware of it,” he says. “Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.” Dude. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Sylvester Stallone spoke out about the death of a stuntman while filming his latest action sequel The Expendables 2 , which opens this weekend in the U.S., saying the incident was “very hard.” Kum Liu died last October while the pic was in production in Bulgaria, while another stuntman Nuo Sun was seriously injured. “The stunt team took it very, very hard and shut down for quite a while,” the 66-year-old told reporters while promoting the movie in London, the BBC said . “It’s happened twice before on films I’ve been on and it’s never easy.” The accident took place during the filming of an explosion on an inflatable boat on Lake Ognyanova in Bulgaria. Stallone’s promotion of Expendables 2 comes on the heels of the tragic death of his son Sage in July at 36. Kun Liu’s parents are currently seeking to reap an unspecified amount from the feature’s production companies Millennium Films and Nu Image as well as stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski. Also starring Arnold Schwarzenegger , Bruce Willis, Liam Hemsworth and Dolph Lundgren, Expendables 2 , the pic centers on a revenge mission when one of the Expendables is murdered in what should have been an easy job. They head into enemy territory against a back drop of an unexpected threat. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays the villain. Now back to full-time film star, Arnold Schwarzenegger said the previous installment of Expendables , in which he made a short appearance while still serving as governor of California when it came out in 2010, was “impossible to top” but the latest is in fact, “bigger and better.” [ Source: BBC ]
The Expendables 2 packs a power-punch of action rough ’em up characters including Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Dame, Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Liam Hemsworth. In their second outting, Mr. Church reunites the group for what should be an easy paycheck, but things go wrong when one of their men is murdered on the job. Revenge is on their minds, but that puts them in enemy territory up against an unexpected threat. The film hits theaters later this year, but Beyond The Trailer host Grace Randolph received some insider impressions of the new pic courtesy of cast members Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture at Comic-Con. One star gushes about the second installment’s “bigger and better” goods.
Woody Allen has cemented an historic onscreen legacy by managing to play a grand total of one single character for the last 47 years. (What versatility!) Needless to say, it’s been one hell of a character: Allen’s extreme version of himself, trading on some of the most base cultural stereotypes out there about New Yorkers, Jews and intellectuals, has, logically or not, repeatedly held mainstream America’s interest. Yet, in a halfhearted nod to the idea of variety, Allen hasn’t always played the character himself – due to the constraints of age, style, and physical type, he’s occasionally enlisted actors to come in and do their best Woody Allen imitation over the years. With a new addition to the coterie coming in To Rome With Love – Jesse Eisenberg is a neo-Woody if ever there was one – it’s worthwhile to take a look back at Allen’s nine most entertaining surrogates. Kenneth Branagh, Celebrity Could the staid, withdrawn nature of British mores and culture – or those of the Irish, for that matter – be any further from the traits needed to play the Woody character effectively? It seems like a counterintuitive choice, but going with Branagh for the Woody surrogate in Celebrity (one of Allen’s more underappreciated films) was a smart choice; Branagh’s natural composure collides in an interesting way with the foregone conclusion of the character’s neuroses and tics. The result is a performance where Branagh is restrained on the surface while seemingly jittery and anxious underneath – a more subtle and surprisingly effective way of making Allen’s comedy work. Jason Biggs, Anything Else One of Allen’s most maligned pictures, it’s this writer’s contention that Anything Else has received an undeservedly bad rap. Sure, the chemistry between Biggs and Christina Ricci is closer to producing liquid nitrogen than hot sparks, but there’s plenty of great one-liners, and Allen himself steals the show. Biggs, one of the least skilled actors to portray a Woody alter ego, is nevertheless entertaining in a performance that paints the character in even broader, more direct strokes than Woody’s on-the-nose performances normally do. It’s as far from subtle as can be, but the broadness and directness of Biggs’ choices sometimes serves to let the delivery of Allen’s bon mots swing for the fences. Larry David, Whatever Works Could there be a more appropriate Allen surrogate under the sun than uber-neurotic Larry David? The cultural connection between the two couldn’t be more apparent; Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm could never have been seen as potentially viable in mainstream America without Allen’s career success. Giving his performance far more vitriol than what Allen is capable of, David revels in the misanthropy that is present, but often more subtly disguised, in Allen’s films. John Cusack, Bullets Over Broadway This is what happens when a talented, popular actor really uses their likability to channel the Woody character well. As famous as Allen is, his character’s narcissism (as well as his personal transgressions later in life) can make him difficult for audiences to root for at times. Cusack blended the typical Woody persona with his own undeniable charm to create a character who, when in a tough spot, you can’t help but empathize with. That would be good if this was a simple relationship film, but when Cusack’s character is getting into danger by dealing with gangsters, it’s more than good – it’s great.
