Vern's review
https://outlawvern.com/2024/03/04/wanted-man/There’s one small disconnect here in that we barely glimpse Rosa when she’s a prostitute at the beginning. One of the movie’s strengths is the non-judgmental way it portrays a character with that background, so I wish we had a first impression of her then to reconsider once we see more of her life. She has this nice family, including a loving mother who calls her “my princess,” and I think a really good touch is that this seems like it could be her old bedroom, with trophies on shelves, a soccer ball, a poster of some player. It looks very lived in, a history of a previous life before she tried to start over in America, got screwed by a coyote and stuck on the streets, doing a dangerous job Johansen can insult her for.
Villa is a really good co-lead, she has a strong screen presence, and a maturity that makes it work when they hint at some sexual tension between them, though thankfully it doesn’t turn into a big thing. She initially told Johansen “I don’t give a fuck about you,” but she goes behind her brother’s back to let him call home. Then some guys immediately show up to shoot up the house. Hmmm.
Here is a reality. Dolph Lundgren is 66 years old, and recovering from cancer, and Sean told me on the podcast that he really did need ankle surgery. He can’t physically do the type of action he used to do, and if they faked it it would seem silly. So most of what he does here is shoot people, and he seems to get very lucky in being able to hit these guys before they hit him. But I really like the way they approach it: being old is one of the main themes, he’s already dealing with an injury at the start of the movie, now has a freshly stitched up (by amateurs) bullet wound. So lumbering around and wincing are part of the story. And this scene has two particularly good action bits:
1) Cuffed-to-the-bed Johansen picking up a shotgun from Rosa’s fallen cousin Salvador (Jose Trujillo), propping it on his body, shooting out the door and through the fence, and we see Salvador’s killer’s body flop out from behind it.
2) A guy is about to shoot Rosa’s mom through the window and Johansen grabs him around the neck and stabs him repeatedly with a knife he got from the kitchen. Dolph’s face really sells it.
One moment I appreciate (I forgot to mention this on the podcast) is at the end when he’s sneaking over the border with a group of his former most hated people, Mexican migrants, and he sees the joy on their faces when they seem to have made it. He smiles and experiences that relief along with them while getting a better idea of their perspective. Whether or not he still talks shit at the strip club (or pool party), he has had one moment in his life where he understood.
Posted: 29 Jan 2024, 20:26
