Piss anyone off lately?

Chaos (2005)
A reasonably decent movie and one I was really into until the wackiness in the third act.  Up to that point, it had been a reasonably well put together crime drama but then they had to take a turn into thriller/mystery land and lost their way.  Granted, it had the same depth than your average Law & Order or Numbers episode, but I was actually grooving to the partnership and unravelling the details of what the bank robbers were actually up against.  I was even going to give big props for killing off Statham, that could have broken the standard mold and been used to great dramatic effect.

Then we had to have The Twist.  I'm a big fan of The Twist, and this one was certainly more conventional than the crap Ritchie tried to pull in Revolver, but this one completely undermined the drama and tension that had been established to this point.  I'd love to have had a version of this where Snipes was just a bad guy, Statham gets taken out, and the kid has to track him down and bring him to justice.  Okay, not the most original of plotlines, but that would have been a perfectly satisfying movie.  But no, we have to have The Twist and as if that wasn't bad enough, we're treated to that most irritating of cinematic conventions: The Unexpected Second Twist.  OMG!  Oh noes!  It's actually been Snipes and Statham in cahoots the whole time!  It's a double-deep-deception!  Blow me.

Statham was serviceable if somewhat uninspired here.  I quite liked him as the bitter mentor cop to the kid and they did a nice job establishing his competence in his handling of the bank job.  I get the impression he wasn't totally into this movie.  But hey, that's okay.  If I knew how it was going to end, I'd not have been that into it either.

Quite liked Ryan Phillippe as The Kid here.  Think I'd only seen him in Gosford Park and the odd TV drama previously, but he held his own and turned in a great performance.  He had the unfortunate burden of having to appear to be unravelling the convoluted mess of a plot in the third act, so more power to him for staying in there and not phoning it in.

Badassery Quotient - 5
Decent amount of gunplay, albeit with an incredible amount of missing, and a cool ending move to a car chase.  Not much fisticuffs, but Statham had some pretty decent presence and the occasional glare.

Rewatchability - No thanks
Could have actually been a solid B movie, but the ending is so grating and insulting that it'd be hard to go back to this one again.  It's very much like they had a change in script writers or ran out of money half way through, said 'fuck it' and tried to cut things short.  Way too many gaping plot holes at the end to recommend this to anyone.

Up next - That damn Dungeon Siege movie.  Fucking Uwe Boll.  Two important life lessons for the kiddos:  Don't do drugs and never make a movie based on a video game.  And never get involved in a land war in Asia.  Okay, three important life lessons:  Drugs are bad, video game movies are bad, and land wars in Asia are bad.  And don't put nipples on the Batsuits.  Okay... Amongst life's important lessons are such diverse elements as...