(trailer review) - How to rob a bank

 

There are trailers that look good, and then there are trailers that look like they were made specifically for me, and Wow. Just wow! If you know me, you know I absolutely live for films like Bullet Train and Deadpool—that perfect, chaotic blend of ultra-slick action, sharp wit, and stylized violence. So when this trailer dropped, I was already all over it. And let me tell you, it does not disappoint.

First of all, I absolutely love Nicholas Hoult. He is front and center. I genuinely think he's one of the most versatile actors working today. One minute he's playing a complete psychopath, the next he's playing someone charming, funny or completely awkward. He seems able to slide into almost any role as he switches gears so effortlessly, and make it work, and from this trailer alone, he looks like he's having an absolute blast and he looks absolutely brilliant here. The thumbnail did actually make me think it was Ed Skrein at first.

​The casting across the board is just hitting all the right notes for me:

​Seeing the black boy from Marvel's The Runaways, Rhenzy Feliz, who many people will more recently recognise from The Penguin, he's one of those actors who always seems to bring a lot of energy whenever he appears on screen and has a very cool demeanor and presence.

Pete Davidson isn't everyone's cup of tea, but he is likely to bring a bit of levity to the group among the chaos. The film looks like it knows exactly when to be serious and exactly when to let the audience laugh, and Pete feels like a big part of that balance.

Then you've got John C. Reilly, who seems to be playing it more straight than comedic with a few comedic notes here and there laced throughout the trailer. I haven't seen Christian in much of anything recently, so seeing Christian Slater genuinely made me smile. Having him back on screen doing his thing is a massive treat. 

Seeing Zoë Kravitz was another great get. She has such a natural screen presence that whenever she turns up in a project, I immediately become more interested. She is great in pretty much everything she has been in from X-Men: First Class to Mad Max Fury Road, to Blink Twice, to The Batman. Absolute bonus. She just adds that extra layer of cool to the whole aesthetic.

The trailer kicks off with a brilliant line that perfectly sets the tone for our digital age: "You know what is more powerful than money? An audience." From there, it hits us with a hilarious breakdown of success rates—comparing the abysmal odds of actually owning your own home or earning a six-figure salary against the surprisingly high success rate of... well, robbing a bank. All of this is delivered by Hoult’s character, casually wearing a mask and talking straight into a camera as they are literally turning bank heists into content for the masses!

We get a glimpse of the crew of four in a van, setting up the ground rules for their next engagement. But when they rush the bank doors, only to politely step aside and let an old lady walk out and a reference to The Golden Girls is mentioned. She doesn't even notice she’s walking past a fully armed heist crew. 

As we see a montage of them hitting banks and recording it all for socials, enter John C. Reilly. His character tells his team: these kids have robbed 15 banks and are making the FBI look like absolute fools.

To level the playing field, the feds enlist a hacker who is currently under house arrest. Their mission? To use a bespoke program she created to track down people who explicitly do not want to be found. What follows is a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, with John C. Reilly hot on their heels until he has a breakthrough. He realises the key to catching them lies in one very specific bank—one that has a major, mysterious tie to the robbers themselves.

The final stretch of the trailer is just pure, unadulterated adrenaline. We’re treated to a barrage of explosions, a flawless dropkick, and intense police chases, but the dialogue remains the star. In the middle of commandeering a getaway vehicle, the driver looks at them in shock and asks, "Is this 'How to Rob a Bank'? I love your show!" Hoult’s crew doesn't even blink: "Thanks for watching!"

The trailer leaves us on a high note with a massive police chase. A cop car smashes into another vehicle, completely flipping it over, prompting one of the robbers to yell out the window: "Dude, you just blew a stop sign!"

Honestly? The comedic timing is impeccable, the action looks incredibly slick, and the premise is brilliant as it also seems to have a lot to say. I cannot wait for this.

(trailer review) - Onslaught

This feels like one of those films that could easily get overlooked. The trailer has a slightly generic setup on paper, there isn’t exactly a huge A-list star front and centre, and I can already see some people dismissing it before giving it a chance. Besides, the name does not help. But honestly? I think this looks really good.

For a good portion of the trailer, I was trying to work out where I recognised the lead actress from. It was bugging me the entire time until her name popped up at the end and it finally clicked. Then I spotted Reginald VelJohnson and thought, "Wait... what?"

But the name that completely caught me off guard was Michael Biehn. Let me catch you up to who this is.

The moment someone in the trailer says they were trying to create the ideal combatant, my brain immediately went to Universal Soldier with Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lungdren. I used to have that recorded off cable TV on VHS and watched it countless times. If memory serves, those soldiers were enhanced more through cybernetics and experimentation than outright robotics like an cyborg, but that's the first thing that came to mind watching the trailer.

The other movie this reminded me of has a guy who was sent back in time to protect a woman from a cyborg because she would eventually give birth to his son, John Connor. Yep, The Terminator.

So seeing his name attached to a film involving engineered super soldiers and or cyborgs/killing machines felt strangely fitting.

The overall vibe gave me a mixture of both those films. It feels more Universal Soldier because of the military backdrop, but there's definitely a little bit of The Terminator DNA in there too. At the same time, it has that slightly rough-around-the-edges B-movie energy that I actually quite enjoy, and considering it's coming from A24, that immediately raises my interest level.

The trailer introduces us to a former soldier who appears to be living a quiet life whilst dealing with the lingering effects of PTSD. She's isolated, keeps to herself and is raising her daughter alone, but things start to unravel when she notices a pattern of military helicopters repeatedly flying over the area where she lives. Convinced something isn't right, she begins digging deeper.

That's when we hear the line, "What you're looking at is the human equivalent of a heat-seeking missile. The perfect soldier." And from there, the trailer kicks into gear.

We get glimpses of a heavily enhanced soldier with pale, almost glowing pupils tearing through people with brutal efficiency. There's a knife attack, gunfire, bodies dropping and the sense that whatever experiment was created has gone very, very wrong.

Then we're introduced to another operative, seemingly brought in to contain the situation and clean up the mess before it becomes public knowledge.

We are then reintroduced to the lead where she's forced into the conflict when the violence starts spilling into her world. From that point onwards, her focus becomes survival and protecting her daughter at all costs.

The story itself doesn't look particularly groundbreaking, but the execution looks strong. The action appears solid, the atmosphere works, and there's enough mystery surrounding these soldiers to keep me interested.

Could it end up being another generic military sci-fi action film? Absolutely. But based on this trailer, I think there's a decent chance it's something better than that. And sometimes, that's all a trailer needs to do. Make you want to find out more.

(film review) - Mortal Kombat II

What’s wild to me is that back in the ‘90s, they actually tried to make a Mortal Kombat movie and at the time… we just accepted it. To be fair, it was definitely better than Street Fighter, but that still didn’t make it good. It was just the best of a bad bunch.

But back then, that was all we had. A bit like those early X-Men films in the 2000s—whether they fully worked or not, fans just had to take what they could get.

Then a few years ago, they rebooted the franchise with Mortal Kombat and while that film was definitely an improvement over the ‘90s version, I still wouldn’t call it amazing because it made some genuinely questionable choices.

This sequel though? Yeah, this is leagues better.

The film pretty much picks up where the last one left off. The tournament is finally here and Raiden needs a new champion pr the Earth Realm will fall. Alongside Sonya Blade, they approach Johnny Cage, an actor who initially brushes the whole thing off after meeting the likes of Liu Kang, Jax and Cole. But once he’s dragged properly into the chaos, Johnny has no choice but to stop acting like a hero and actually become one.

And honestly, I had a blast with this film.

The plot itself is still pretty basic—stop the bad guys from taking over Earthrealm—but the difference this time is that almost everything else has been improved. The action is better, the pacing is better, the characters are more enjoyable and the fight choreography is on another level compared to the previous film. The previous film kind of felt like an action film with fighting where this one feels more like a action martial arts film.

Seeing classic moves from the games finally translated properly onto the screen was a genuine game changer.

The dialogue is still cheesy in places, but I found myself laughing, chuckling and fully enjoying the ridiculousness of it all throughout the film. The movie knows exactly what it is and leans into it.

The addition of Karl Urban as Johnny Cage was honestly perfect casting, especially with how they handled the character. He brings the exact kind of energy the movie needed.

The visual effects are solid too. Not groundbreaking or Avatar-level spectacle, but they absolutely do the job. And there are loads of moments that reminded me of other cult classics and fantasy properties like Big Trouble in Little China, Game of Thrones and even Pennywise at one point.

There’s even a fake movie within the movie called 'Uncaged Fury' and honestly? I’d genuinely watch that. It is all the nonsensical and over the top action from a B-rated (I think it is called B-rated) movie, from the early 80s...almost like Dolemite Is My Name (see my review on that).

Overall, this is just a fun time. Good action, brutal fights, decent humour, solid performances and way more entertaining than the previous film. If you enjoyed the first rebooted movie, you’ll probably have a great time with this.

But if you’re expecting some deep, serious masterpiece… this definitely isn’t that.