Bank Robber | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

The new Tyler Perry Netflix movie “Straw” captures, better than almost any other movie I have seen, the life of a single mother Janiyah Wiltkinson, played by Taraji P. Henson, is like watching a slow-moving car wreck. Janiyah has two horrible jobs, one as a cashier in a rundown food store, with a rude, cruel boss who treats her like garbage.

Janiyah is about to lose her apartment to eviction, and her 8-year-old daughter is sick and needs medicine that she cannot afford. Janiyah’s landlord couldn’t care less about her disastrous life and refuses to give her more time to pay her rent, evicting her despite her pleading for more time – one of this movie’s singularly horrific moments. Later in this depressing story, Janiyah even has her car towed because her registration was not renewed. Life sometimes works this way for far too many of us, when it seems that everything is going wrong at the same time. How many millions in the world, through no fault of their own, fall into a life this dire and depressing?

The acting of Taraji P. Henson is outstanding, as good as her performance nine years ago in the great film “Hidden Figures” (2016). Sherri Shepherd is also outstanding as an empathetic bank executive, Nicole, who tries to help Janiyah when circumstances spiral out of control. There are some typical Tyler Perry moments in this story that do not seem to hold water, and some standard Perry movie misdirection and trickery at the end, but overall, this is a well-told story with great acting about what can happen to anyone when circumstances out of our control ruin our lives.

Tyler Perry has been one of those hard-working screenwriters and directors who has taken more than his share of bad hits over the years from several critics. This time around, few can argue that Straw is one of the best movies he has ever produced. I give this movie a solid 95% recommendation.

The word from the movie industry (much like Broadway) is that any thoughts of a realized rebound in 2020 are out the window. The promised release of all 2020 blockbuster movies coming out this year now have all been pushed into 2021. This is why Regal Cinemas has decided to close down all of its US locations for a second time this year. The final straw happening with the new James Bond movie being pushed to April 2021.

The other large movie chain AMC has recently announced that they are running out of money and could be out of business by year end.

Many in the financial world are predicting the total collapse of the movie industry as it existed in 2019 and unfortunately because of Covid-19, they could all be right. Nobody would have imagined 1 year ago all that has happened in 2020; a year far worse than any year anyone alive can remember.

As far as the new movie “Honest Thief”, starring Liam Neeson and Kate Walsh many critics will say that we have seen most or all of the scenes in similar movies in the past and Liam Neeson is still capitalizing on his great 2008 performance in “Taken”. This is all true, but overall I thought that the story and the message make this one worth a visit.

This story is about a former bank robber, played by Neeson who wants to come clean and give back the 9 million dollars he stole years earlier in exchange for getting a much lighter sentence so he can be with his new girlfriend, played by Walsh. Unfortunately due to human greed and the amount money involved this idea goes very south quickly and what follows is a believable story and some good action. The very low 37% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes for this one are way off – once again proving that the critics are wrong too much of the time. To give a good movie like this one only 37% makes no sense. More in line with reality is the 71% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes that I agree with. I do recommend this movie.