THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME : Sunday 7th June 2020.

In these very trying and testing times for us all that has seen many cinema's, Odeon's, and movie theatres around the world close their doors for the foreseeable future because of the escalating threat of the COVID-19 Coronavirus taking an ever increasing hold on the world at large, many film and television productions halted in their tracks indefinitely, and new film releases pushed back to some future date when some sense of movie going normalcy is expected to resume, I have, needless to say, had to adapt to this new world order. And so with my usual Reviews of the latest cinematic releases being curtailed, instead I will post my Review of the latest release movies showing on Netflix until such time as the regular outing to my local multiplex or independent theatre can be reinstated.

In the last few weeks then, a number of new feature films have landed at Netflix - of which I review as below 'The Last Days of American Crime' which went live on the streaming service on 5th June and which I saw from the comfort of my own home on Sunday 7th June.

'THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME' is a Netflix Original American action crime thriller Directed by Olivier Megaton whose previous film making credits include 'Transporter 3', 'Colombiana', 'Taken 2' and 'Taken 3' most recently in 2015. The film is based on the 2009 graphic novel of the same name by Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini, and has garnered mostly negative Reviews despite topping Netflix's most watched ladder in its first weekend.

The film opens up with Graham Bricke (Edgar Ramirez) sitting on the edge of a bathtub while he douses a bound and gagged man in petrol. Naturally, he is after some information from the bound and gagged guy relating to a stash of cash. He lights up a cigar and stuffs it into the mouth of the guy still bound but by now in a state of panic. Bricke gets up and walks out of the bathroom into a neighbouring room where lie three bloodied and very dead corpses. He sits for a while and then leaves. As he exits the apartment building it explodes in a ball of flame behind him. Walking down the street, there is a topless woman dancing on top of a parked car, looters come crashing out of a store, there is gun fire and general mayhem all around. Set in the very near future (2025) we quickly learn that the government are introducing a controversial technological advancement that sends a signal to the brain that prevents anyone from committing a crime. Known as the American Peace Initiative (API), that signal will be activated nationwide in one weeks time, so rendering criminals and the Police Force redundant.

Naturally, the whole country is thrown into chaos as the clock counts down with the criminal world doing all it can to complete any unfinished business, settle old scores, commit that one last job before they physically won't be able to. The Police have all but shut border crossings into Canada, which remains a free country, and have orders to shoot to kill any opportunists trying to make a dash for it - of which there are plenty. Sat in a bar, Bricke who by now we have deduced is a career  criminal, reads a letter from the Prison authorities saying that his beloved little brother Rory (Daniel Fox) had committed suicide while serving time. Enter Shelby Dupree (Anna Brewster), an accomplished high level hacker, who quickly seduces Bricke in the very skuzzy mens toilet, and upon exiting is introduced to her fiancee Kevin Cash (Michael Pitt), the heir to the biggest crime syndicate in the city and his daddy's billion dollar+ fortune. Cash states that he served time with Rory and that his death was no suicide, instead being beaten to death by four Prison Guards with batons which he witnessed. Cash offers him one last final big US$5M pay day in which to pull off a heist the moment the API switches on, and to get even with the people who killed his brother, and then to hot foot it across the border to the safe haven of Canada.

Next up, we see Bricke taking covert camera shots of a delivery truck outside some heavily fortified bank vault and deducing that US$1B are contained therein and what a wheez it would be to heist this. All of sudden Cash's US$5M heist pails into insignificance as Bricke's US$1B heist wins the day hands down, and suddenly Bricke is in charge. All the while the clock continues to count down on API go-live day as seen in constant news coverage and digital images on almost every street corner. In the meantime, over the next couple of days there's a lot of toing and froing between Bricke, Cash and Shelby as they bicker, argue and decide on their course of action, leaving very little time in reality to plan a heist in a heavily fortified 'Money Factory' that amounts to US$1B. Bricke also seems to have access to a super desk top printer that is able to print out forged US$100 bills that are so convincing that the only way to tell that they are counterfeit is to burn them - fake money that he intends to bribe the Head of the Money Factory so gaining him access to the vault.

We also witness Shelby telling two heavy set Police Detectives the plans around the mechanics of the heist. They are really after Cash, and have little interest in Bricke. Shelby's motives surround her young sister who the cops are holding in custody until Shelby come forth with sufficient information to convince them to release her and allow her safe passage into Canada. Which they do, with a threat that if Shelby is conning them they will track down her sister and see to it that she pays the ultimate price. What Shelby doesn't know is that Bricke is looking on through the sights of a long range rifle. He later questions her, but is almost dismissive when she states that the cops are after Cash, and the story surrounding her sister. Around about this time Bricke recruits his trusted good friend Ross King (Tamer Burjaq) to be their driver.

Cash meanwhile, is left in charge with securing the wherewithal to detonate the bolts that secure the vault in the depths of the Money Factory. Channelling his best Travis Bickle from 1976's 'Taxi Driver', Cash oggles himself in the mirror stripped down to his trousers waving two cannons into the mirror and admiring himself. He needs to visit his super rich criminal king pin Daddy, whom he is estranged from and with whom he has a love/hate relationship with to secure the explosive devices. He visits his heavily guarded mansion when there is a party going on, with Bricke in tow. They meet with Rossi Dumois (Patrick Bergin), who is more that frosty at the sight of his son visiting saying 'I thought you were dead!'

What ensues is a bullet ballet in which Daddy is speared through the head by his son, Cash's shoots his sister in close range in the stomach, the party guests all flee, leaving Cash and Bricke to make their getaway through an ante-room where all manner of high tech weaponry and explosive devices are stashed, leaving behind a trail of bloodshed and Dumois head henchman Lonnie French (Brandon Auret) hot on his heels. A car chase ensues with all guns blazing, tyres screeching, culminating with the three bullet riddled vehicles all upended on their roofs.

French catches up with Bricke and Shelby at his camper trailer, ties him to a chair, beats him senseless and then invites the guy in from the first scene in the bathtub to eek out his revenge. That guy is badly burned and wrapped in ill fitting bandages that reveal the extent of his heavily scolded face and arms from which he seems to have made an almost miraculous recovery given that it was only five or six days ago, and how the Hell he survived God only knows? Anyway, that guy is Hell bent on seeing to it that Bricke goes the same way and douses him in petrol but not before burning his nipple with a cigar. He then lights a compromising photo of Bricke and Shelby and throws it on the fuel before making a quick exit. Needless to say the camper trailer erupts into a ball of flame, just as Ross King emerges to drag Bricke outta there with seconds to spare before the trailer is blown to kingdom come, with Shelby looking on, horrified from the car driven away by French. Meanwhile King has put an end to the bathtub guy.


With all this going on, at the city Police Department the commanding officer is telling a group of gathered Officers that within 48 hours their jobs are basically redundant. With no crime there is no need for law enforcement, except for a select few who will be reassigned. Enter William Sawyer (Sharlto Copley) as the down at heel desk Sergeant who asks his commanding officer if he can be reassigned to a patrol car in the closing days before the API signal goes live. In a heartbeat, he is told yes, and off he drives to patrol the streets, whereupon he is jeered, heckled and his vehicle bombarded with all manner of projectiles from an increasingly volatile public. Back at Police HQ he volunteers to have a chip implanted in his neck that is an instant API signal blocker.

The group of Cash, Bricke, King and Shelby all regroup. The day of the mega heist arrives as the clock is counting down on the final 24 hours. Cash and Bricke make their way to the Money Factory and are allowed access because of the bribe being offered to the head honcho there. Cash is concealed under the vehicle and out of sight. Bricke parks up in the basement and hands over the bribe money. As he walks back towards his car, the head honcho ignites a note to test its authenticity and quickly discovers it's fake. At this point Cash emerges from under the car all guns blazing and a fierce fire fight breaks out with the pair driving the vehicle into a goods lift. Meanwhile, King is driving a truck into the bowels of a neighbouring building. Bricke and Cash end up in the basement vault and using the explosive devices secured from daddy's secret armoury they explode the reinforced hinges off the vault door and gain access to a US$1B payday. King in the meantime has blasted his way through the back end of the vault and forklifts the stash of cash into the back of his waiting truck.

With all of this going on Shelby has infiltrated the API control tower with the aim of disabling the signal for thirty minutes giving the rest of the crew just enough time to load up the truck and get outta Dodge. What Shelby doesn't count on is that Sawyer is on patrol in the building and apprehends her for acting suspiciously when returning from attempting to override the signal from the computer banks. They get into a fight just as the signal goes live, and Shelby is incapacitated. Sawyer overpowers her, they tussle, fight, roll around on the floor, smash through glass shelves and tables, which results in Sawyer falling off a table and getting impaled through the neck by a shard of glass. Shelby then places an explosive devise on the computer banks which control the now live API signal and makes a quick getaway.

With the truck of loot now safely outta there, Cash, Bricke and King reunite at a secret location. There, Cash shoots and kills King, and then shoots Bricke in the stomach. Cash reveals that he has an inbuilt natural immunity, mentally and physically, to the API signal and that it was in fact him who killed Bricke's brother Rory in prison by beating him to death with his bare hands in a fight staged by the Prison Guards who all looked on just for the sport. He also adds that he knows that Shelby and he are screwing, and when he asks Bricke for any comment he blows his left ear off with a shotgun. Bricke is left defenceless by the API signal. What Cash hadn't counted on is that the two cops who Shelby days earlier had informed about the pending heist are waiting just parked out of sight witnessing all of this unfold but within gun shot range. One of the cops takes pot shots at Cash, disabling him, and then finishes him off with another clean round. They walk up to Bricke and seeing the extent of his injuries leave him to die. As the cops sit back in their vehicle celebrating their success in thwarting the robbery and dispensing with the perpetrators, up sidles Bricke and unloads every round of his semi-automatic pistol through the front windscreen riddling the pair in a hail of bullets, dead!

At this point the API tower has exploded so rendering the signal defunct. This enables Bricke to mount the truck and drive towards the boarder with Canada. Shelby meanwhile is walking bloodied, and dazed out the API tower followed by a number of armed guards all demanding that she halts in her tracks. As she crosses the road with six or so guards stood to her rear, all pointing their weapons at her, Bricke rocks up in his truck and takes out parked cars, concrete bollards and the armed guards all at once. Shelby gets in the truck and they make their way across the border into Canada but not before crashing through Police cordon's, border patrol and heavily fortified check points to come to rest at the docks as the sun rises. Bricke is drained and near death, and sure enough just after Shelby announces her undying love for him he dies at the steering wheel. Shelby makes a getaway with a holdall full of cash and the ashes of Rory. We later see Shelby and her younger sister reunited, with the pair down by some isolated lake in the Canadian mountain wilderness as Shelby scatters Rory's ashes.

I couldn't help reading the many Reviews of 'The Last Days of American Crime', which for the most part absolutely annihilate this offering, before watching it for myself to see what all the fuss was about. And sure enough, those Reviews pretty much have nailed it. At a running time of nigh on two and a half hours, the Director clearly believes that 'more is more', when in fact 'less is more' by trimming a good 45 minutes would have made a more efficient, coherent film. The film has been panned by Critics for its depiction of Police brutality, violent content and the fact that its release couldn't have come at a worse time when the world has gone into protest over the George Floyd killing at the hands of the Minneapolis Police on 25th May. The first half of the film plods along at a snails pace where little happens and by the time the second half clicks into gear its all too much, all too late by which time you've already checked out! Often incoherent; the plot has more holes in it than Swiss cheese; the dialogue is at times both completely non-sensical and boring; there is little chemistry between the three principle characters; and the storyline is derivative, formulaic, unimaginative and we have seen this kind of stuff a hundred times already, only done much better. Watch it at your peril because you may just end up as incapacitated mentally and physically as if you had been zapped by the API yourself.

'The Last Days of American Crime' merits one clap of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-