David R. Walker

Posts Tagged ‘Cokey Falkow’

A Working Man

Director: David Ayer

Cast: Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Maximilian Osinski, Cokey Falkow, Michael Pena, David Harbour, Arianna Rivas, Piotr Witkowski, Greg Kolpakchi

Running Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

Film Rating: 6.5 out of 10

With screenwriters David Ayer and Sylvester Stallone based upon the book by Chuck Dixon called Levon’s Trade, A Working Man perfectly recreates a world of good and evil. In David Ayer’s universe, the evil villains are really bad: diabolical and ruthlessly violent.

A Working Man’s poster shows an image of the action star Jason Statham looking mean with a shotgun and a baseball bat and this tells viewers everything about a violent action film in which Statham’s character Levon Cade is a construction site manager who at the film’s beginning is down and out, sleeping in his car and battling to get custody of his beautiful young daughter.

A Working Man pits the honest hard working fellow against an evil crime syndicate that are involved in human trafficking and the kidnapping of young girls for kinky clients in distant locations on the outskirts of Chicago.

In this case, when the construction boss Joe Garcia played by Michael Pena’s daughter Jenny gets kidnapped on a girl’s night out, Levon is hired by the Garcia’s to find their talented daughter.

Levon with the help of his blind friend Gunny played by David Harbour enters the underworld of Chicago crime syndicates and discovers that the real perpetrators are the evil Russians. In this case these are not the Brighton Beach Russians of director Sean Baker’s Oscar winning film Anora, these are the crazy Russians with links to human trafficking, drugs and illegal gambling.

The Russian crime syndicate is thrown into disarray when the son of a Russian mob boss, Dimi Kosnyk played by Maximilian Osinski (In Time) hires two deadbeats to kidnap Jenny Garcia and then have to face the consequences of their actions when Levon Cade comes after the entire Russian crime family including the crazy twin brothers, dressed in matching haute couture tracksuits, Danya and Vanko played by Greg Kolpakchi and Piotr Witkowski.

The scene in the panel van when Levon takes on the twins is frenetic and then there is the final gruesome showdown in which director David Ayer does really ensure that audiences are taken into the depravity and decadence of the underworld filled with bloodshed and perversion.

One thing David Ayer does brilliantly is creating his evil villains and in A Working Man he does not disappoint.

Cinematographer Shawn White and production designer Nigel Evans do a superb job of creating a contracting aesthetic between the bright innocent world of normal law abiding citizens and the dark nefarious world of organized crime. The contrast is startling and effective.

South African audiences should watch out for a great cameo by SA actor Cokey Falkow (Jurassic World: Dominion) as Dougie a biker enforcer who also gets involved in Levon’s crusade to save the maiden from the underworld.

A Working Man is a violent kidnapping thriller with action man Jason Statham delivering on every level and gets a film rating of 6.5 out of 10. This film is average with parts of the storyline sliding indulgently into excess while generally it maintains an entertaining storyline.

This film is recommended for action fans and lovers of David Ayer films like Fury, Suicide Squad and End of Watch.

Jurassic World: Dominion

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Campbell Scott, Omar Sy, Isabella Sermon, DeWanda Wise, Dichen Lachman, Mamoudou Athie, Cokey Falkow

Running Time: 2 hours 26 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

To round off the reboot trilogy of Jurassic World which started in 2015, director Colin Trevorrow returns to the director’s chair for the third and final instalment Jurassic World: Dominion reuniting the new cast Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard with the cast of the original 1993 Jurassic Park film consisting of Oscar winner Laura Dern (Marriage Story) as Ellie Sattler, Sam Neill as Alan Grant and the ever quirky Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm.

In the 2022 version, Dinosaurs mix freely with humans in a bizarre social world however something is amiss when giant locusts start attacking the food supply in West Texas.

Campbell Scott (The Sheltering Sky) plays a peevish version of a Steve Jobs type character, Lewis Dodgson who runs an extremely shady Biosyn Tech company in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy and is involved in all sorts of weird genetic engineering, playing God with creatures which just become more lethal and uncontrollable as the story unfolds.

Dodgson and his gang of thieves kidnap Maisie Lockwood from the guardianship of Owen Grady and Claire Dearing played respectively by Chris Pratt and by Bryce Dallas Howard.

In the meantime Sattler and Grant investigate the splurge of these giant locusts at the highly sophisticated Biosyn Tech company headquarters, where literally everything goes wrong including letting loose some Apex predators.

Dodgson’s greedy fascination with genetic engineering and dinosaurs sees him become a pathetic villain. Unfortunately, Campbell Scott is not a strong enough actor to play a convincing villain. For Jurassic World: Dominion, the producers needed a really charismatic actor to play the evil villain who is akin to Hugo Drax in Moonraker.

Before the entire world’s food supply gets threatened, Sattler realises that the mutation of the locusts need to be stopped before the general population is three meals away from anarchy.

The first half of Jurassic World: Dominion is really action packed particularly the chase sequence on Malta however the second half in the Dolomite Mountains is nothing original and is really the same group of characters being threatened by scary dinosaurs. The kids will love it!

DeWanda Wise is fantastic as the kickass aeroplane pilot for hire Kayla Watts and Mamoudou Athie is equally good as the only honest employee left at BioSyn. Audiences should look out for Dichen Lachman from the Animal Kingdom TV series as the ruthless henchwoman Santos.

Judging by how packed the cinema was, Jurassic World: Dominion is not a bad summer blockbuster film and gets a film rating of 7 out of 10.

If audiences enjoyed the first two films, then they will love this one. The third installment has all the ingredients of an action packed exotic film filled with dinosaurs, fascinating side characters and sweeping shots of unbelievable locations from Malta to Texas to the Italian alps.