Shameless Self Expression

A desperate prison guard (Dolph Lundgren) with a terminally ill daughter hears from an incarcerated gang leader that he hid $3 Million in cash inside an abandoned building that he stole from a rival criminal gang. He sets about entering the building and nabbing the cash to pay for his kid’s cancer treatment (Said kid being played by Lundgren’s own daughter Ida). Adding a fly into the ointment the building (formerly a hospital) is rigged with explosives and set for demolition very soon. Scott Adkins plays a down-on-his-luck ex-MMA fighter now making a buck as part of the building’s demolition crew when he stumbles upon the cash and sees literal dollar signs. Meanwhile, as these two men are about to collide and the explosives set to detonate, outside a ruthless gang of crims (led by Scott Hunter) are about to enter the building. They aim to claim the cash for themselves as Hunter’s brother was the true owner of the loot.   Not-bad, if somewhat poor man’s version of Walter Hill’s ...

Kinda sorta (definitely) based on the true story of Albrecht Muth, Christoph Waltz stars as Ulrich Mott, a foreign-born Washington social climber accused of killing his 90ish wife Elsa (Vanessa Redgrave). Mott, supposedly a brigadier general in the Iraqi Special Forces, used his former journalist wife’s political connections as he hosts swanky parties with bigwigs, and sets up a bullshit Ponzi scheme of an NGO brilliantly called the Eminent Persons Group (Ulrich so desperately wants to be seen as eminent himself). The only person who seemingly sees Ulrich for the lowly con artist that he is, is Elsa’s middle-aged college professor daughter (Annette Bening) who suspects the man killed her mother.   Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz makes his underwhelming directorial debut with this flat, unsurprising 2020 con artist crime-drama. Scripted by David Auburn ( “The Lake House” ) and based on a Franklin Foer article for the New York Times, it’s somewhat based on a true story but yo...