The Bag Man (2014)

A dark, sharp and twisty thriller that's engaging, enjoyable and actually very entertaining with strange and shady characters, suspense and surprises. It's darkly funny, attractive and at times repulsive in its mood and attitude and has some very good dialogue. A consistently moving and tense thriller that's intense and exciting. John Cusack is excellent, it's always great to see him play an extremely different type of character that is out of his usual comfort zone and clearly shows he still loves his job. Rebecca Da Costa is such a gorgeous and refreshing face and looks to be fairly promising. Robert De Niro is brilliant, he looks like he's having a blast playing a bad guy and trying out some new looks. Dominic Purcell is terrific. A stylish, dark and gripping film noir that echos of Quentin Tarantino and Alfred Hitchcock.

Formulaic gangster film that wastes a good cast, The Bag Man will surely leave genre fans disappointed by its lacking script, recycled ideas and underwhelming story. This film should have been much better than what it turned out to be, and in the end, it simply wastes some good cast members on a lazy written script that just doesn't deliver what you'd expect from a well executed gangster film. This is a pure waste of time, and it's a boring film that doesn't seem to have any redeeming qualities. This film was riddled with genre clichés, and instead of trying to do something new and exciting with the formula, director David Grovic executes a film that just doesn't display anything that is worth seeing. The biggest problem with the film is that due to a lacking script, the film never becomes anything good or worthwhile. The Bag Man is a boring movie that is a train wreck due to the fact that its cast on a story that we've seen many times before. Add to that, that the dialogue is a cheaply done Tarantino knock off, and by doing so it tries way too hard at being a "smart" crime film, and it ends up just being a folly. Don't expect much from this film, you'll surely be disappointed, and it never is entertaining and exciting. The Bag Man plays out like a B movie with big name actors, and it fails to really stand out due to its clichéd storyline. If given a complete rewrite, then maybe this film would have succeeds, as there were a few interesting ideas that popped up here and there, but they are lost in the river of bad writing, and boring performances. The Bag Man is yet another bad film that isn't worth seeing, even by die hard crime film fans.