ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Jeffrey Dean Morgan

The Postcard Killings: Murder, with a Twist

Imagine that, one day, you get a postcard that states, ?Love will never die?. Would you be confused? What would you do with it? 

The Postcard Killings tells two stories from both the protagonist and antagonist points of view. Jacob Kanon (Jeffery Dean Morgan) is an NYPD detective who gets the call that his daughter and his son in-law have been murdered. Detective Kanon is determined to seek the killer of his daughter as her hands are missing from her body. Jacob’s wife, Valerie Kanon (Famke Janssen), decides to do some investigating close to home while Jacob takes himself overseas to Europe to pursue the killer. Their teamwork through phone calls and Facetime calls is spectacular. They help each other out during the investigation when one is stuck on a problem. What?s more, Jacob does not just have his wife as an ally, he also recruits Inspector Bubilitz (Joachim Krol) and Desse Lombard (Cush Jumbo), a Swedish reporter, to help in his search. When Lombard gets a postcard from the killer regarding their most recent murder, Desse decides to write a story on Jacob while trying to help him solve the case.

The Postcard Killings leaves you at the edge of your seat and takes you on a wild ride to see if Jacob will get his justice. (Also, the huge plot twist in the first 30 minutes leaves you shocked.) While I thought that The Postcard Killings would feel familiar in the vein of Taken, where the killers reveal themselves in the first few minutes of the film and the father decides to take justice into his own hands. But, this film is completely different as the killers remain hidden in plain sight, keeping their identities secret until later on in the film.

Jeffery Dean Morgan does a fantastic performance playing Detective Kanon. While you might think he would just play the tough guy detective that will stop at nothing to find justice for his daughter. However, Killings allows us to also see the detective?s soft side. For example, Morgan gives an emotional performance during the moments when he realizes that his daughter is gone or when he sees something that reminds him of his daughter. Because of his emotional display, the audience is really allowed to connect with his character.

If you really like crime and mystery films and are looking for something that isn?t afraid to try something new, then this is the movie for you. The characters are great and even with the plot leaves you at the edge of your seat as you are trying to solve the mystery as well. I highly recommend this movie to some crime fans that are out there. The movie leaves you with a slight sigh of relief (and also a potential sequel opportunity as well). 

Check out The Postcard Killings.

The Postcard Killings is available on VOD now.

Heist: The Art of Misdirection

heist

Robert De Niro. Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Kate Bosworth. Morris Chestnut. Gina Carano. Dave Bautista.

The cast list reads like a who’s who of good-but-not-great films that have littered the landscape of early spring and late summer. All of them have been in?something?spectacular, but bringing them all together echoes with the late-breaking career of Morgan Freeman as the set-up man.?Heist?(or?Bus 657) is that kind of film about a blackjack dealing-father who needs the perfect heist to pay for his daughter’s expensive, non-insurance-covered operation.

Luke Vaughn (Morgan) knows he shouldn’t steal from “The Pope” (De Niro) but when heavy Cox (Bautista, sans makeup) lures him into robbing Pope’s casino and righthand man Derrick Prince (Chestnut), he is all in. Their robbery goes south (duh!) and they end up careening around on a bus driven by Bernie (D.B. Sweeney) with a setup straight out of?Speed. However, local officer Kris Bajos (Carano) is in hot pursuit, and is soon joined by a suave Marconi (Mark-Paul Gosselaar). Vaughn and Cox (obviously) disagree on how to proceed, and the plot thickens aboard the bus.

All of this is pretty much what you would expect, like a?Speedy Ocean’s Eleven?without the humor. We’re warned several times that things are not what they seem but unfortunately, they seem so obvious that the ‘sleight of hand’ was telegraphed well before the big reveal. I don’t know if this is the result of a poor script, or poor direction, but the crew deserved better.

And then there’s the human interest level, as if the kid in the hospital bed motif wasn’t enough: we’re supposed to believe that The Pope really, really badly wishes he had made better life decisions and he wants to go straight. Or at least he wants a shot at conning his completely empathetic daughter (Kate Bosworth) into believing he can go straight, which changes the whole dynamic of the film. I am all for redemptive story arcs, and Bosworth nails the paltry five minutes that she’s given here, but the transition is so jarring that I thought I must’ve missed something. (I had not.)

Fortunately, each piece by each actor is pretty solid. Bautista has my attention after?Guardians of the Galaxy?and?Spectre; I’m already a fan of Bosworth and Morgan. But the real misdirection seems to be in thinking that there was going to be an emotional payoff for the audience that just wasn’t there.?I’m disappointed, really.

The trailer had me fooled.