The new movie on Amazon Prime “7500” is about the hijacking of a passenger Jet by a group of terrorists. What I liked about this movie is the acting, mainly from the lead actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the realistic action throughout this film. What I did not like is the ongoing trend with terrorist movies – giving new ideas to insane criminals in this world. In this case using glass – made into knives to stab and kill people while trying to take over the controls of the passenger Jet. One has to wonder if this is a solution to getting a weapon on board any plane, because how can the x-ray machines detect glass?

One of the worst offenders of this is the movie “Executive Decision”, released in 1996 where the terrorist took over a plane in an attempt to crash it into Washington DC, releasing a nerve agent that would have killed thousands of people. With all movies like this one, some middle ground has to be reached where extreme action and drama that is acceptable, along with never giving terrorists any new ideas. The world has enough problems with terrorist as it is, without coming up with new ideas inside of a movie.

One of the other thoughts I had while watching this movie was, why would anyone want to work as an Airline Pilot or be a Stewardess? Not only are you employed by a precarious business, most especially now because of the Pandemic but you are almost never home, always living out of a hotel, and at any time there could be a mechanical failure, horrific accident or a Terrorist attack. My guess is that you must have a calling to want to work in this industry, definitely something I would never be interested in as a career.

Overall I agree with the middle of the road, 70% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and give this film a mild recommendation, mainly because of the acting of Levitt.

You are a typical American, who like so many millions, has a job you hate and a boss who loves to make your life miserable. On top of that you are getting a divorce and unfortunately, live in one of the thousands of locations in this country, where the traffic is horrendous. This is the believable scenario that summarizes the beginning of the movie “Unhinged”, starring Russel Crowe.

Actress Caren Pistorius plays Rachel, the woman who at the start of this movie is in her car with her son, desperately trying to find her way to work despite the horrible traffic. Eventually she runs into the worse case scenario other driver played by Russel Crowe, when she herself is at her lowest. The road rage that follows is some of most effective and believable that I have seen in any movie.

When encountering “The Man” in the other car, Rachel makes the exact wrong mistake by honking her horn too loudly after he would not move after the light turned green. This is a story that should have been a very good one, reminding many people of the movie “Duel”, directed by Steven Spielberg released in 1971 and the road rage that exists on so many roads in this country.

Unfortunately too many parts of this story and mostly bad ending have what is called “Hollywood-ified” illogical action to pump up the conclusion. This ongoing practice almost never works and both the villain and the woman trying to protect her son would never do any of the very stupid things they do at the end of this story. People rush to the police to save their lives and a villain in real life will always kill any person who gets in their way immediately. There are no second chances giving the victim an opportunity to save their lives when you are dealing with a desperate and very angry mass murderer. The case of Unhinged is that it is a good thriller with a very believeable beginning that was greatly diminished by a bad ending.

For those who remember what a great actor Russel Crowe is, now some 20 years after winning an Oscar for “Gladiator” in 2000 and a nominated for “A Beautiful Mind” in 2001 – in what is arguably his greatest role, it is hard to see him in a lower quality movie like this. Movie roles like those great parts 20 years ago have not come to Crowe since, although he has had some very good acting parts over the years, including the excellent “Cinderella Man” in 2005 and most recently his role playing Roger Ailes in “The Loudest Voice” in 2019. One can only wonder why Crowe is so extremely overweight – perhaps not able to lose the weight for the Ailes role, or other reasons including the stress of his divorce and his movie career not going as well as it has in the past. His acting in this movie is very good, but I am surprised that due to his clout as a bankable star, the script was not made better with many more re-writes.

I agree with the low 47% ratings for this film on Rotten Tomatoes and unfortunately, mostly because of the bad ending, I cannot recommend it.

I never would have thought a year ago that I would not see any movie in a theater from early March to early September 2020 or that I would have to wear a mask. Things have changed in the movie industry in the past year, and the reality is that things may never be the same as they were again. Now there are rules for all theaters, starting with extreme cleanliness, no working water fountains, bathrooms with every other appliance blocked off. Social distancing stickers were all over the floor and understandably there were only a small number of people in the movie theater. The reality is, due to the world wide tragedy of the Corona Virus, the number of people who regularly go to the movies may never get back to the way it was in 2019.

Unfortunately my return to a movie theater after 6 months included sitting through 2 1/2 hours of one of the worst movies I have ever seen – “Tenet”, written and directed by Christoper Nolan. As Nolan has tried to prove in every movie he has ever made; he is more interested in being very different than entertaining or inspiring an audience. In just about every scene in Tenet, there is no explanation, no transition, no real story and no respect for the viewing audience. After two hours of this, I could not wait for this ridiculous nightmare of a movie to be over. After 2 1/2 hours, it was almost impossible to not walk out of the theater. I find movies like Tenet that make no effort to make the story understandable – infuriating. With Nolan it seems at times he has this attitude of, “its not my responsibility to explain my stories, let the audience fend for themselves.” For those of us who aspire to write a great screenplay and have it made into a great movie, seeing bad movies like Tenet are even more unbearable to sit through.

Tenet mostly stars John David Washington and in a much smaller role, Robert Pattinson. They are both part of some kind of a CIA organization called Tenet with a purpose that is never explained. What is also never really explained are these various tools and bullets that when used or touched act in reverse time – which is some kind of new science that was invented by some Russian organization, for reasons that are also never explained. What is the purpose during this entire movie to have the ability to reverse time? Where was the gain, financial or otherwise in reversing time within this story? None of this is ever explained. This movie makes no sense on any level and is a complete waste of 2 1/2 hours.

Some of the reviews I have read on Rotten Tomatoes include:

“The final action sequence is completely incomprehensible. Does Nolan even care? Like “Inception,” “Tenet” characters spend gobs of screen time explaining to us, and each other, what’s happening. That’s a rookie screenwriting tic that Nolan can’t stop repeating. Then again, what could possibly clear up this 2 hour, 31 minute smoke bomb of a movie.” – Sean Collier

“A massive, sprawling, largely incomprehensible mess, albeit with Nolan’s usual slick action scenes and sense of weight.” – Christopher Lloyd

Despite all of these horrendous reviews, the overall score for Tenet is an ridiculous 74%. My rating is a 3% – only for some of the special effects. Can we finally put an end to movies like this and directors who do not care about the audience, including Michael Bay and all of his Transformer movies? Just because something has never been done before with an idea that has never been seen before, does not make any movie good, or ever worth seeing.

I have no idea why Micheal Caine , Himesh Patel or Kenneth Branagh agreed to act in this perfect example of an extremely bad movie, other than perhaps giving back a favor they owed to Nolan or some production company.

Tenet is one of the worst movies I have ever seen and should never even be copied to DVD – because it is just that bad. Run from this horrible mess.