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What's in the BOX!? 'Commuter' and 'Den of Thieves'

| May 18, 2018 1:00 AM

Not every movie deserves full admission price. Some don’t even deserve two dollars.

Enter the Redbox Test. Passing it means enjoying a Redbox rental enough that you’re only slightly annoyed when you don’t return it before being billed for the second night. We put that test to the, um, test in America’s fourth-favorite Coeur d’Alene Press entertainment section recurring feature, “What’s in the BOX!?”

Editor’s note: If you aren’t yelling “What’s in the BOX!?” like Brad Pitt in “Seven” every time you read the words, “What’s in the BOX!?,” then you’re not doing it right.

On tonight’s episode, two early 2018 thrillers ­— Liam Neeson’s latest “punching” movie, “The Commuter,” and the Gerard Butler-led cops vs. robbers thriller, “Den of Thieves.” Strap in for an evening of excessive testosterone and movies with titles you’ll struggle to remember a day later.

First up: “The Commuter,” a movie about Liam Neeson solving a crisis on a commuter train because, well, he’s already done so on cars and airplanes.

Neeson plays an ex-cop-turned-insurance-salesman-turned-desperate-unemployed-guy who is approached by a stranger (Vera Farmiga) with a seemingly simple proposition: Identify a fellow passenger on the train and make a wad of cash. The passenger, however, seems to be a key witness to a massive conspiracy, so even a cash-strapped Neeson can’t let such a thing stand without cracking some noses.

Neeson actually plays his age here — he tussles with a few bad guys, but he certainly isn’t a killing machine like in “Taken.” Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (in his fourth collaboration with Neeson after “Unknown,” “Non-Stop” and “Run All Night”), “The Commuter” chugs along fine as a standard Alfred Hitchcock rip-off, though the third act twists are much too obvious and boneheaded even on the Redbox standard. At least it clocks in at a relatively tight 105 minutes, which leaves little time to dwell on the silliest plot mechanizations.

Verdict: Isn’t this basically the same movie as “Non-Stop”? All these Neeson action movies bleed together, except for that one about the wolves. Two bucks is a tolerable price for “The Commuter,” but no way should you ever pay for a second night. Get off your butt and get that disc back to Walgreens!

If you chose to watch “Den of Thieves” second in this double-feature, you better start a pot of coffee. You’re about to endure a sloggy two hours of tough dudes talking tough before watching 20 minutes of negligent gunplay. At the very least, the cops here, led by a characteristically-dopey Gerard Butler, need a better understanding of standard weapons safety protocol and the rules of engagement.

Seriously, “Den of Thieves” is a movie about men measuring their … testosterone levels against other men. Butler yearns to be the toughest, “street smart” cop in history, even as it costs him his ill-defined marriage. He’s trying to catch a team of bank robbers led by Pablo Schneider (Pornstache from “Orange is the New Black”) and Curtis Jackson (50 Cent from music), but everybody seems more interested in figuring out who can make their best “mean eyes” at the gun range.

“Den of Thieves” does little to distinguish itself from its obvious inspiration, the Michael Mann classic, “Heat.” The machine gun fight that climaxes the movie plays like a rewarmed version of much better sequences (like in “Heat” or, more recently, “Sicario”). Even with all the manly peacocking, the cast can’t do anything to enliven the film. The film’s best character, played by the talented O’Shea Jackson Jr., disappears for long stretches while Butler continues his illustrious career of failing to mask his accent.

An exciting 90-minute thriller exists somewhere inside this 140-minute debacle. A start would be ditching the undercooked character backstories and getting to the bank heist much earlier in the movie.

The name doesn’t make sense either. “Den of Thieves” suggests a story about the dynamics between a group of thieves. Most of the movie focuses on Butler, who is not a thief and especially not part of a den of thieves. Also, the movie might be called “House of Thieves” or “Array of Thieves,” or maybe even “Thieves in Dens.” It’s much too forgettable to make any difference.

Verdict: That two dollars could have gone to your children’s college fund. But instead you watched “Den of Thieves.” Reassess your life.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.