I went into this movie with some hope, just some hope, not much but damn "1992 (2022)" in my ignorant opinion was a total mess, a movie in which I found myself looking at my watch more than once. This flick came out in 2022 but premier on theaters on 2024, it attempts to blend a heist thriller with social message to the setting of the L. A. riots.
We have Tyrese Gibson who is cast to portray Mercer, an ex convict who is trying to lead an ordinary life and also trying to mend his relationship with his teenage son, Antoine. Lowell is played by the late Ray Liotta who is a veteran criminal who is planning for one last heist with his two sons. All this is happening as the city’s about to explode after the Rodney King verdict, seems it may be rather fascinating, is not it? Well, I was not expecting too much of it but it really falls flat.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4959750/
- Platform: Amazon
The movie begins with Mercer, collecting his son and attempting to steer through a dynamite which is L. A. on the edge of the riots. We get some father son tension, some ‘don’t get into too much trouble’ speeches and then out of the blue Mercer believes the best place for them is at his job, a metal working factory. He has no idea that Lowell and his crew are already there attempting to steal a bunch of platinum. From there it becomes your standard ‘Die Hard’ clone where Mercer is the lone ranger as Antoine gets to be in the middle of the shooting.
So let’s discuss the cast of the movie so at least we can appreciate what could have been because the script did not help at all, I did wanted to see Tyrese do good but I'm not so sure if he is ready to do a full blow main protagonist of an action movie, he has been good as a sidekick funny guy though. Tyrese Gibson as Mercer, the guy has his supporters a fan base no doubt, but in this movie he is character is not believable at all, just too predictable and lack of emotions. He plays this reformed hard man who is all good now but there were times when it seemed like he was reading the lines and not embodying the character. At some point, I was sitting there thinking, “Okay, give me something to work with here, but nope, it was just more of the same stilted performance.
Ray Liotta, unfortunately, God rest his soul, is one of the few actors who can add some seriousness to the screen. It’s a shame that it is his last film but at least the guy is still able to pull out that dangerous appeal that he had. Each time he is on the camera, the feeling is that one could get frostbite. Still, it is just unfortunate that he did not get more quality material to mold and shape.
The other characters are quite okay, but nothing to write home about, for example Scott Eastwood who plays as Riggin, the son of Lowell who wants no part of the business, his performance was just average in my opinion and Christopher A mmanuel as Antoine has some good scenes, specifically when he is arguing with Mercer, however the rest of the acting is as dry, the entire movie has the same look over all.
To be honest I was just looking around multiple sites trying to find something to watch, I'm more of a TV series guy than movies but when I saw Tyrese as the protagonist I said, I like him on F&F so lets give it a try and people online were not that excited about this one neither. Some people understood the effort to combine the action with social relevance but it was a common thing that everyone sensed that the movie failed at both levels. No days time has become a very valuable asset and for me once I start watching a movie or TV series I have to finish it so at least my time was worth something. The fight scenes on the movie were quite passable on the technical level, at least the choreography was OK, but it appeared that nobody was quite sure what this movie wanted to be, for me sometimes it looks like it wants to be a strong racial drama and sometimes it looks like it wants to be a fun action packed heist movie.
I was more irritated than amused, while attempting to address some rather serious issues, the movie falls flat trying to grasp too much and it also lack of context. The L. A. riots are really just window dressing and that makes me feel like this is a huge missed chance, they could detail this situation so much if at least incorporate some of the irl stories about this riots. You have got this incredibly charged historical moment in time and you do next to nothing with it, to a certain extend it reminds me of Napoleon Biopic. That’s like having a Ferrari and using it to go to a corner store and back and back and back.
The plot of the heist is plain and simple, nothing that you have not seen before. What really got me was how it blew it and did not live up to the expectations I had when watching the movie. It was also times where it could have gone further into the ethnic issues prevalent in the country, the relationships between a son and his father or the shades of grey in the criminal justice system during protest. But what it does is only that it touches upon these concepts, without ever really getting fully involved in any of them, it is as if the creators of this film were too scared to step on any toes and thus they just produced a rather random film.
