Review #41 THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME (2020, Olivier Megaton)

 

* * 

The not-too-distant future is such a shitshow that the powers-that-be resort to broadcasting a signal that prevents people from engaging in unlawful acts.

Starring  Édgar Ramírez, Michael Pitt, Anna Brewster, Patrick Bergin, Sharlto Copley

Written by  Karl Gajdusek

Produced by  Jesse Berger, Jason Michael Berman, Barry Levine

Duration  149 minutes

  

JAWS is pretty much credited for establishing the summer blockbuster. But more than that, it’s one of the first of what can be classed as a ‘what if?’ movie. In the case of the 1976 hit, it’s a pretty innocuous one: What if a beachside tourist community was threatened by a man-eating shark during the 4th of July weekend?

It wasn’t until the more-is-more ’80s that big idea pictures reached their full potential. Mega producers like Joel Silver and the Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer combo made a killing on high concepts that could be summed up in one sentence and had the potential for high stakes, sexy characters, tense culture clashes and enormous ticket sales:

– What if a racist white cop needed a black criminal to crack a case? 48 HRS (1982) (Silver)

– What if a sexy young woman worked as a welder by day and a stripper at night, with dreams of becoming a professional dancer? FLASHDANCE (1983) (Simpson/Bruckheimer)

– What if a streetwise Detroit cop used his brash ways to investigate a crime in Los Angeles County's snootiest zip code? BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984) (Simpson/Bruckheimer)

– What if two virginal nerds manufactured their dream woman and became the most popular guys in school? WEIRD SCIENCE (1985) (Silver)

– What if sexy young pilots flew around in a vaguely competitive tournament, between games of beach volleyball and hanging around the locker-room shirtless? TOP GUN (1986) (Simpson/Bruckheimer)

– What if a black cop needed a white cop to crack a case, but couldn’t be sure that the white cop wasn’t an unstable suicidal liability? LETHAL WEAPON (1987) (Silver)

– What about one out-of-town New York cop versus 15 European terrorists in an LA skyscraper on Christmas Eve? DIE HARD (1988) (Silver)

– What if it was TOP GUN again, but this time with cars that keep turning left around a big circle while the spectators hope for a crash? DAYS OF THUNDER (1990) (Simpson/Bruckheimer)

Now, THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME is hardly a summer blockbuster; it’s a Netflix original that is unlikely to ever be projected onto a large screen or be subject to queues around the block.

But it does have a what-if scenario that would’ve fit right in during the '80s: What if the US Government made it physically impossible for anyone to commit a crime?

The first thing that comes to mind re: controlling people to lessen antisocial behaviour is Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, where Alex is a guinea pig for a new method that induces revulsion to counteract his naughty urges. Then there’s Brave New World, where Aldous Huxley went the nicey-nicey route for keeping the populace in check – as opposed to 1984, with George Orwell’s "boot stamping on a human face" focus on prevention through disenfranchisement: there can be no thoughtcrime if the state has removed the words to express dissent from your vocabulary. More recently, similar territory to THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME has been explored in THE PURGE movie series, where society is allowed to get all the crime out its system for one anarchic night per year.

Unfortunately, LAST DAYS wraps its intriguing premise up in an uninspired and generic crime thriller. It’s long, but not deep; violent, but unexciting; loud, but not clever. Disappointing, then, but perhaps not surprising, being that it comes to us from the director of TAKEN 2, TAKEN 3 and COLUMBIANA, the implausibly named Oliver Megaton, and that rather than the likes of Burgess, Huxley or Orwell, the source material is some comic book.

It’s the kind of movie where you’ve seen everything before: the plot points, the relationships, the attitudes, the tense interactions ... even the songs have all been used already in other, better movies: ‘Glory Box’ by Portishead (1996's STEALING BEAUTY); The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ (from LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELLS in 1998 – and also recycled from Megaton’s own TRANSPORTER 3!). LAST DAYS turns out to be a heist movie, and the heist, when it eventually comes, is good – but not good enough to make the previous 110 minutes worth enduring.

And by the end, I was left with my own 'what if?' question: what if they'd made THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME with more smarts, or more fun, or more originality – basically anything that could have stopped it becoming a bland, generic, overlong slog that’s worse than even the later PURGE sequels?

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  To paraphrase Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in JURASSIC PARK, crime will find a way.

What would a movie called THE FIRST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME be about?  Someone stealing George Washington’s wooden teeth or something like that.

Previously:  ABOUT LAST NIGHT

Next time:  SAFETY LAST!

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com