Back in his heyday as a leading man, Kurt Russell (The Thing, Escape from New York) had many movies that were massive box-office successes. From 1989 through 1996, he received top billing in five films (Backdraft, Unlawful Entry, Tombstone, Stargate, Executive Decision), earning more than $50 million in revenue. He continued that streak in the highly promoted Breakdown, which garnered $50.2 million while earning critical (81%) and audience (67%) acclaim. Breakdown was a movie I saw opening weekend in the movie theater and one that I hadn’t revisited until 2021. I remember loving it in the theaters. Unfortunately, because there have been so many ripoffs of this movie since that have done this premise better, its rewatch left something to be desired. Unlike his other films mentioned above, Breakdown fails to hold, though it is through no fault of Russell who carries it throughout, just like he does with most of his films.
Category Archives: Kurt Russell
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is arguably my favorite Quentin Tarantino’s (Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained) movie. However, that isn’t saying a lot since he is not one of my favorite directors out there. I admit that there is an audience for his movies. I’m just not a part of that audience. For me, his films are too often over the top, are loaded with extreme and unneeded violence, and contain the foulest language you’ll hear from a big-budget movie any year that one of his movies was released. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was FAR different than his previous eight films. The story was not over the top. The cursing, while present, was used to accent a verbal exchange rather than serve as the root of it. And outside of a 10-15 minute sequence, there wasn’t any over-the-top violence. This movie was long and a bit boring, but it wasn’t bad. It also had excellent acting performances.
Deepwater Horizon (2016)
If you’re going to make a big-budget disaster movie, it might as well be based on a true story. Personally, I’m so over the huge blockbuster disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow, Poseidon, Independence Day, The Core, Volcano, Into the Storm, Armageddon (which I actually really like), San Andreas (which I also kind of liked), Dante’s Peak…the list goes on and on. The point of these movies, and so many others, is to make a big buck. Forget about the plausibility; most of these movies are utterly ridiculous. The hero(es) always overcome the most extreme circumstances and, often, end up saving the world in the end. Now while the 2010 disaster caused the worst offshore oil spill in United States history and made British Petroleum (BP) the most villainous company on the face of the planet at the time, the story of Deepwater Horizon does take some liberties along the way. While the unfortunate events on that night of April 10th certainly did happen, the events on that rig felt very much like James Cameron’s Titanic after the ship hits the iceberg.
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