Lionsgate / Maple Pictures

When it comes to screenwriters in the industry, William Goldman is virtually the king of the written word.  From writing such hits as Marathon Man and All The President’s Men to The Princess Bride, Goldman will always be a legend in Hollywood even if it has been a while since his last successful original work.  Wild Card is a remake of the Burt Reynolds version of Heat back in 1986.  It’s been a few decades since watching the film, so instead of trying to remember anything from it how about I just stick to this stylized version?
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From the moment Son of a Gun opens up taking you behind bars as JR (Brenton Thwaites) is being processed into an Australian prison, it is the start of a journey that throws everything at its audience till the final credits roll.  I have a hard time figuring out just how to classify Son of a Gun; it is everything from being a film about self-discovery, a guys-behind-bars film, to being a heist film and so much more. The title refers to JR as he goes about serving his time behind bars and captures the attention of an infamous thief Brendan (Ewan McGregor).
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I’m starting to wonder if it is time we officially made a sub-genre for kidnapping films.  It’s a storyline that has been played out for decades but continues to offer up some engaging and oftentimes heart-wrenching tales that for the most part have happy endings but that seems to be a far stretch from reality, though I doubt audiences are looking for these bleak realistic endings and mostly prefer the Hollywood ending where everyone is rescued in just the nick of time.  When Prisoners came out, I had hopes that it would be a film that wouldn’t shy away from the harsh realities, and for the most part it succeeded, but I still felt it held back.
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Experimental film can mean lots of different things. Usually it means chaos and disorientation as we are plunged into worlds we have never seen before, but experimental can merely mean doing something that has never really been done before. In this case, it is taking a simple idea and seeing if you can make it work. Can you make something interesting that seems too simple and too basic? Anything can work if you apply discipline and intelligence to a project.
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