Sometimes a film seems to have all the right elements but still it comes up short.
Hallie Myers-Shyler's 'Goodrich' boasts Michael Keaton and Mila Kunis playing a father and daughter as well as Carmen Ejogo, Michael Urie, Kevin Pollak and Andie MacDowell in its cast.
It's a relationship comedy drama where the focus is on a sixtysomething, workaholic, Los Angeles art dealer Andy Goodrich, whose boutique gallery is starting to fail just as his relationship with his second wife, Laura Benanti's Naomi is coming off the rails.
Informed by her that she has checked into rehab for 90 days and he will have to pay closer attention to raising their nine year old twins, Jakob Kopera's Mose and Vivian Lyra Blair's Billie, he is mystified that he didn't grasp his wife was addicted to prescription drugs.
Initially Andy struggles to readjust his life around the twins, taking them to elementary school late after forgetting to make them their lunch.
However he is also struggling to run the gallery with his business partner Kevin Pollak's Cy and banks everything on landing a show by a recently deceased feminist artist by launching a charm offensive on her performance poet daughter, Carmen Ejogo's Lola.
With the really perceptive Billie admonishing him for not really spending enough time with her and Mose at home and always going out in the evening for work, he gets additional grief from his pregnant daughter from his first marriage, Mila Kunis' Grace who is worried about him.
And while he tries to be there for Billie and Mose, Andy clings to the hope that his rift with Naomi can be healed while also befriending Michael Urie's gay dad of another kid in school, Terry.
Written and directed by Myers-Shyer, who is the daughter of two filmmakers Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer, 'Goodrich' aims to be the sort of comedy drama where the lead character gains new perspective on his life and grows as a person.
The film likes to think it is acerbic enough to send up Andy's flaws just like James L Brooks' 'As Good As It Gets'.
However Myers-Shyer's second feature is not nearly as funny as it ought to be.
In fact, it just sort of blandly rumbles along, with Keaton, Kunis, Urie, Pollak, Ejogo, Benanti, MacDowell, Kopera, Blair and Danny Deferrari as Grace's husband Pete working hard to breathe life into a very safe script and struggling to generate any laughs.
Available on Amazon Prime in the UK and Ireland, it's the kind of relationship comedy drama that was a mainstay of cinema in the 1970s and 80s.
However it is far too safe and nice and it falls back on far too many familiar tropes.
As a result, like a soggy box of matches, it never really threatens to set its audience alight.
It's a pretty lifeless story - instantly forgettable.
('Goodrich' was made available for streaming on Amazon Prime on June 16, 2025)
Welshman Gareth Evans has built quite a reputation for himself as a director of edge of your seat films and TV shows that feature high octane, very noisy, muscular action sequences.
The Cynon Valley filmmaker first established his name in Indonesia with the acclaimed action thriller 'The Raid' in 2011 and its sequel 'The Raid 2' in 2014 - both of which caught the attention of audiences, critics and studio executives around the world for their relentless, blood splattered action.
After dabbling in horror with 2018's 'Apostle,' Evans honed his reputation for hyper violent gunplay in the Sky Atlantic series 'Gangs of London' two years later.
Now he's back on Netflix with a grimy, bloody police corruption movie 'Havoc,' starring Tom Hardy and Forest Whittaker.
Hardy plays Patrick Walker, a mumbly homicide detective with a dysfunctional family life (what else would you expect) in a grotty, unnamed, decaying American city.
Desperately scrambling around for presents for his young daughter on Christmas Eve, he and his rookie partner Jessie Mei Li's Ellie are called to a nightclub where masked men have slaughtered a local Triad leader, Jeremy Ang Jones' Tsui and his many associates after they received stolen cocaine smuggled in a shipment of washing machines.
Earlier, Walker's colleagues had been in pursuit of a gang led by Justin Cromwell's Charlie and Quelin Sepulveda's Mia who stole the consignment.
However they lost them in spectacular fashion after the thieves pushed a washing machine from their truck onto the police car pursuing them.
A colleague of Walker's, Serhat Metin's Cortez is left fighting for his life in intensive care while the blame for the attack on Tsui is pinned on Charlie and Mia who were captured fleeing the scene of the nightclub attack on CCTV.
Walker, though, notices Mia is carrying a pistol and warns Ellie against swallowing an all too easy narrative.
He notes the attack on Tsui was clearly carried out with assault rifles.
Hardy's character has a vested interest, though, in helping the troubled duo because Charlie is the estranged son of Forest Whittaker's real estate tycoon and mayoral candidate Lawrence Beaumont who is bankrolling him.
Meanwhile Tsui's mother, played by Yeo Yann Yann, arrives in the city, eager to avenge her son's death.
She confronts a member of the Triad gang who survived, Sunny Pang's disgruntled lieutenant Ching who points her in the direction of Charlie as the man responsible for killing her son - even though he was the one who betrayed Tsui.
Knowing the cops are looking for them and also the Triads, Mia and Charlie seek the help of Mia's uncle Raul, played by Luis Guzman, who offers to arrange false passports.
However Walker also tracks them down at Raul's place - having struck a deal with Beaumont that if he spirits Charlie away to safety, he will no longer have to work for the developer again.
Troubled by his recent past as a dirty cop, Walker is pitted against other corrupt colleagues, Timothy Olyphant's Vincent and Richard Harrington's Jake.
And as he sets about righting wrongs, a bloodbath becomes inevitable but who will emerge alive?
Evans' strengths as an action director are very much on display in this movie which is loud, flashy, often grisly and superbly edited by Sara Jones and Matt Platts-Mills.
In many ways, the panache of the action sequences elevates a rather perfunctory script by Evans - packed full of dirty cop movie cliches.
Hardy chews the scenery with his Brandoesque presence.
Whittaker, Guzman, Olyphant and Harrington do their thing, never overshadowing the lead man but they prove entertaining nevertheless.
Mei Li, Yann Yann, Pang, Cromwell, Sepulveda and Ang Jones are all engaging but they do nothing really spectacular.
'Havoc' is simply a slick, hyper violent, disposable action movie where scores of people are ripped apart by bullets or stabbed with little real care for who they are.
It's a diversion for 105 minutes or so.
That's all there is - nothing more, nothing less.
('Havoc' was made available for streaming on Netflix on April 25, 2025)
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