Del and Mladen review ‘Rogue City / Bronx’
Image courtesy of Gaumont.
“Rogue City,” aka “Bronx” Starring Lannick Gautry, Stanislas Merhar, Kaaris, David Bell, Barbara Opsomer and Jean Reno. Directed by Olivier Marchal. 116 minutes. Rated TV-MA. Netflix.
Del’s take
What the hell is the name of this movie? “Bronx” or “Rogue City”?
It’s both. Released in some countries as “Bronx,” it appears on Netflix as “Bronx” and “Rogue City,” a bit much to ask of somebody in a vomit-soaked wifebeater waking up from a 12-beer bender.
Should you choose to go this route, prepare yourself for a gritty, nasty, violent crime drama where the line between cops and robbers, good guys and bad, is described perfectly by one of the kingpins negotiating a deal with anti-gang unit boss Richard Vronski (Lannick Gautry):
“You know the only difference between you and me? A police badge.”
That message is conveyed throughout the movie in a multiplicity of ways, straight to the bitter – and I do mean bitter – end credits.
“Bronx” is about a local police anti-gang unit operating to thwart the activities of drug gangs in Marseilles (yes, the movie is French, and it is subtitled, so there goes about 85 percent of the American audience). The unit has become as thuggish and brutal in its methods as the criminals it seeks to suppress, drawing the ire of Internal Affairs and other elements of the French law enforcement community.
As the story progresses we come to know that everyone in the Marseilles police department is in cahoots with the crime community EXCEPT some of the guys on the anti-gang unit. I’ll let you decide who’s on the take and who’s just an asshole.
The story is a typically bleak modern viewpoint, made special by its cinematography and explicit violence. I expect Mladen was disappointed by the level of mayhem, but to my sensitive palate “Bronx” was soaked through and through with shocking footage both overt and suggested. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to cinematic violence. But it must serve a storytelling purpose. In the case of “Bronx,” violence was the story.
Acting was solid, with the incomparable Jean Reno playing a role contrary to his character type. One of the pleasures I get from watching foreign movies is seeing how other people live, and “Bronx” provides an extensive look at that aspect of French citizenship. Apparently shiny floor tiles is a thing in Marseilles.
What I did not like about “Bronx” was its heavy-headed subtext and dystopian worldview. The chief of the anti-gang unit, Vronski, is named after a “motherfucker” from a Tolstoy novel, according to a crime boss, one of the few human-like creatures in the film. I would like to believe people are not as selfish and hateful as the Marseilles anti-gang unit and their persons of interest, but maybe I’m wrong. After enduring four years of the Trump administration I should no longer harbor such idealistic fantasies.
Still, “Bronx” is entertaining, though it requires a strong stomach for those sensitive to blood. I’m not sure what the title is meant to convey – maybe a European conception of what a crime-riddled American city must be like. If so, I would say America’s Bronx has nothing on Marseilles, which comes across a shootout away from total anarchy.
I would give “Bronx” a B.
Mladen’s take
It’s tough to tell. Am I tepid about the French movie “Bronx” because Del promised it was uber-violent but wasn’t? Or, am I disappointed because the cop/gang/drug war movie was disorienting?
Disorienting, how? Well, there were shifting alliances and billions of character names thrown around. There was not one single good guy or wonderful gal in the whole damn Netflix film. Not one. Yes, there were a couple of less than bad guys – the Internal Affairs investigator, for example – but a prominent good person would’ve helped me track the bad guys, which would’ve helped me follow the story. All the cops were corrupt or otherwise compromised, e.g., one cop screwing another cop’s wife. The drug gangs were, ah, Mexican cartel-like drug gangs. Fighting brutally for territory and respect, though their marketplace was Marseilles, a city of some 900,000 people. Wouldn’t it have been more productive for everyone involved to divvy the city into parcels using socioeconomic data to ensure each gang gets a fair and balanced share of jack from drug peddling?
By the time “Bronx” ends, you feel like you’ve been seeing from the inside the way the outgoing and bonkers Trump administration operates. Everyone inside the police department is part of clique that protects its own from the other cliques in the police department. Unflinching loyalty, rather than decency, honor, public service, or competence, is the play. Non-legal side hustles and betrayal are the norm. The drug gangs, think of one as Vladimir Putin and the other, oh, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dick with each other until everyone but a cop unit from a different police department ends up dead. Absurd.
“Bronx” isn’t introspective. It isn’t didactic. It isn’t good versus bad. It’s bad versus an ever badder bad interwoven with the kind of incomprehensibility you find in films such as “Inception” or “Tenet.” The moral turpitude and nearly unfathomable complexity became tiring after a while. And, one of the movie’s principal firefights occurred at night, which, again, was disorienting. I had no idea who was shooting at whom. So, instead of a gun battle at the OK Corral, or whatever, the viewer gets muzzle flashes and plinking bullets from every direction amid vast deposits of black screen. Besides, if everyone in “Bronx” is a bad dude or dudette, who cares which one of them dies?
Wait. It just occurred to me. The reason I mostly disliked the movie. Its intrigue and violence reflected the malaise of normal life on Earth these days. “Bronx” relied on narcissism and nihilism to see it through. Its violence lacked the wholesomeness of the man vs. computer action in “The Matrix.” It wasn’t the survival violence of man vs. nature as portrayed in “Jaws.” It wasn’t the tired violence of a war fought too long as on display in “Fury.” It wasn’t the outrageous and playful violence of “John Wick” Chapter 1 and “John Wick” Chapter 2. “Bronx” violence was about the Euro with a dose of racism pitched in. Eh.
“Bronx” had some money behind it because its production value was good. The acting was decent. I saw no trouble with film editing. The score, though indistinctive, fit the movie well enough. I found myself imitating in pretend French the catchy song at the end of the film.
Bronx gets a C+ and Del needs to hone his definition of “violent.” This movie was no “Scarface.”
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Open Road Films and Briarliff Entertainment.
“Honest Thief” Starring hot Kate Walsh, old Liam Neeson, decent bad guy Jai Courtney, remorseful Anthony Ramos, skeptical but open-minded Jeffrey Donovan and others. Directed by Mark Williams. 99 minutes. PG-13. Amazon Prime.
Mladen’s take
“Honest Thief” is an honest-to-goodness mediocre movie. It pulls a C+. The film’s woes in a moment. I’m obliged to provide a summary first to sedate Del’s urge to nag me about it.
Liam Neeson as Tom Carter falls in love with perfect woman Annie Wilkins played by Kate Walsh. Carter decides that the relationship will suffer unless he comes clean with his dark past, which ain’t all that dark if you ask me. Stealing from the rich to keep some for yourself and give some to the poor is OK with me.
Anyway, Tom tries to confess to the FBI that he’s a long-wanted bank robber and cut a deal to serve less time in the hoosegow so that he can spend more time with Annie. As The Fixx will tell you, one thing leads to another and, pretty soon, Tom and Annie are on the run from a couple of corrupt FBI special agents trying to steal the money that he robbed from assorted financial institutions.
Toss in guilt trips, a murder or two and attempted murders, violations of the oath to serve and protect, EOD expertise, lots of PG-13 gun play, and a healthy house-destroying detonation and you’ve got a pretty standard tale of a somewhat bad man, a thief, attempting to do the right thing, be honest.
Casting old Neeson as an adroit, strong brawler and an ace car driver provokes one of my biggest movie-going peeves. Action films cannot be propelled by aged dudes. And, Neeson is gaunt to boot, so it’s impossible for him to use sheer bulk as the source of a powerful punch. I’m somewhat old and would, no doubt, break many a bone falling from a two-story window whether I’m locked in fisticuffs with a Bureau baddie or not. Hell, I’m not even convinced Tom would be able to lift the uber-drill he uses to break into bank vaults made of thick steel.
Even more of an impossibility is that someone as fine as Annie would fall for a semi-mummy-looking fellow such as Tom. That said, Walsh does a good job making the movie flow. She’s convincing as a girlfriend who goes from disbelieving and troubled that her beau is a bank robber to a willing accomplice intrigued by Tom’s techno-skills.
In fact, it’s getting to the point where I’ll consider watching a movie starring Walsh even if the genre is crap. For example, she was very good in “Grey’s Anatomy.” My daughter made me watch the show.
“Honest Thief” knows what it is. A passable film that’ll draw a sufficient number of viewers to make some bank. I imagine it also took no more than a week to make, freeing Neeson to shoot another film where he can pretend to be as strong as the 30-year-olds he’s fighting.
Del’s take
I would make a lousy Robin Hood because I am not as sanguine as Mladen about stealing from the rich to give to the poor. I thought the whole point of capitalism was to let people come up with a great idea, work their ass off, sell it for billions of dollars and enjoy the financial fruits of their labor.
Being rich doesn’t mean a person is evil. Breaking the rules and stealing – those things are evil. So with that thought I segue into my critique of “Honest Thief”: It was a decent enough action movie based on a ridiculous premise.
Throughout my viewing of I heard a voice inside telling me, “This is ridiculous. Nobody but NOBODY would behave like this.”
And by “this” I mean what Mladen wrote: “Liam Neeson as Tom Carter falls in love with perfect woman Annie Wilkins played by Kate Walsh. Dolan decides that the relationship will suffer unless he comes clean with his dark past … Tom tries to confess to the FBI that he’s a long-wanted bank robber and cut a deal to serve less time in the hoosegow so that he can spend more time with Annie. As The Fixx will tell you, one thing leads to another and, pretty soon, Tom and Annie are on the run from a couple of corrupt FBI special agents trying to steal the money that he robbed from assorted financial institutions.”
What Mladen omitted in his otherwise acceptable summary was the reason for Tom Carter’s bank-robbing spree. It was to avenge a miscarriage of justice inflicted on his father by a bank. I’m rolling my eyes as I write this.
THAT is a ridiculous premise.
What follows is a corny, formulaic beat-’em-up that explodes every house, falls off every ledge and lands every roundhouse you would expect from a man with a particular set of skills. Liam Neeson gimps his way through the plot with respectable dexterity – I mean, the guy is 68 years old, which is only two years older than yours truly, and I would not want to have my teeth kicked by anybody, much less a corrupt FBI agent. But I would agree with Mladen that maybe he’s a tad long in the tooth for those kinds of roles. To go on would be a mis-taken.
I enjoyed the action and I thought Kate Walsh and Jai Courtney were the standout actors. Neeson was his usual post-AARP good guy with a pacemaker. The characters were props for the action, however, and that’s what I remember best from “Honest Thief.”
Mladen gave the movie a C+. I’ll be a little more generous and say it’s a B-. The unbelievable premise knocks it down from a solid B.
Mladen Rudman is a former newspaper reporter and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former newspaper editor and author.
Del Stone Jr.
When I lived in my noisy townhouse, the one with paper-thin walls, I sometimes climbed aboard my bicycle and pedaled off into the relative quiet of surrounding neighborhoods, a journey that often carried me to a winding lane in Cinco Bayou called Opp Boulevard.
Opp is populated with very few big houses, lots of duplexes and townhouses, and a slew of cottage-style homes. It’s a narrow road fringed with big, big trees and because of the park, the people who live there are insulated from the clamor of Eglin Parkway, Hughes Street and Uptown Station.
I liked the neighborhood on Opp Boulevard because it was cozy, out-of-the-way and quiet, the kind of place where people washed their cars, mowed their yards, and waved when they passed you by. Time seemed to move slower there, and that’s what I wanted – the serenity of slow.
It never occurred to me that I too could live there.
That opportunity arrived in 2015 when I was abruptly informed by my landlords they were selling the noisy townhouse I had lived in 24 years. Would two months be sufficient to get out?
Thus began a depressing search for new digs, and I say “depressing” because the rent I had been paying, about $600 a month, had become as out of date as my tastes in neighborhoods. I looked at absolute dumps for between $900 and $1,200. A smaller, more cramped apartment lay in my future.
Then a coworker gave me the number of a friend who needed a tenant for his rental. I called and we made an appointment to meet. Imagine my delight when the address was “Opp Boulevard.”
The house was crazy big, with much more space than I needed. The rent was more than I could afford, about half my monthly income. But the landlord came down on the price and I vowed to stretch my budget, and within a few days we had agreed on a lease.
So.
After 24 years I was living in a house. An actual house. With three bedrooms and two bathrooms. I garage. A walk-in closet, for crying out loud. And get this – TWO refrigerators – one in the kitchen and the other in the garage, which I could load with beer.
Could it be? Could I be so lucky?
My first few weeks there were consumed with guilt. I felt I was living in a palace that I didn’t deserve. The living room echoed. I had my choice of two showers. One room was devoted exclusively to holding cardboard boxes of books. The garage held everything but the car.
It was true. I had died and gone to heaven.
My euphoria lasted until that first post-move in paycheck, which is when the panic commenced. How the heck would I pay for all this? I received a monthly pension from a former company, and every penny of that went into savings, along with whatever I had left over from salary. Now, the pension money would go to rent and practically nothing would remain for the bank.
But somehow I made it work, and I did save money, and both my new landlord and the bank were content.
I lived in the house five years, and they were five happy, happy years – not that it was all free sailing.
Being next to a park … well, let’s be honest … it was a swamp … meant bugs. Roaches and palmetto bugs constantly found ways inside, dodging the sticky traps and roach hotels I laid out for them. I kept a can of spray in one bathroom because the cockroaches seemed to favor that one for their intrusions.
The house had skylights and something was always falling on the plexiglass, producing a loud bang or crack in the middle of the night that at first scared the daylights out of me. I learned to ignore sharp noises, but I could not ignore the sound of something trying to claw its way through the skylight one night as I shivered through a viewing of “Insidious.”
The heater was strange – hot water from the water heater was pumped through a network of baffles. A fan blew over the baffles and the-now warmed air circulated into the house. Except it wasn’t very warm because I kept the thermostat on the water heater pretty low.
But it was nice to come home from work the night of a parade and not find my parking space taken by a parade fan. It was nice to not have to hear somebody’s American Ninja Warriors or Call of Duty rattling the walls. I could walk to Uptown Station when I needed something. Or just sit on the front porch, hemmed in by azaleas, and quietly read a book without being distracted by the thunder of traffic.
I loved that house, and I loved the neighbors and the neighborhood. I felt at home going there, pulling into the driveway and seeing the warm light from the kitchen shining from the windows.
So of course, it couldn’t last.
I don’t live there any more. I have moved in with Mom. She is at that age where she needs somebody with her.
It’s tight, and I have little space of my own. Half a closet, a spot for my computer desk, and a twin-sized bed. My clothes dryer is a clothesline in the back yard. The beer fridge is still with me, in a utility room outside near the car port.
Some day I will have another house, maybe one that I will have built, and it will be in a nice, shaded neighborhood where people wash their cars, mow their yards, and wave as they pass you by.
The serenity of slow.
I will have a home.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Del Stone Jr.
I don’t know what I was expecting – fire, pestilence, world-ending earthquakes. It is 2020, after all.
In truth, Halloween was like all the recent Halloweens. Here are the highlights:
1. I was afraid the weather would be chilly and windy, but it was perfect – temperatures in the mid-60s and practically no wind. No bugs, either.
2. For the first time in memory, a full moon rode the sky. Patches of clouds drifted across its silvery face, lending a spooky effect. I tried to take a photo with my phone but I couldn’t turn down the brightness and got only a white patch in the sky.
3. I went old school on the jack-o-lantern. I wanted to replicate the look of the jack-o-lanterns in “Halloween.” According to my niece Liz, I achieved that goal.
4. We got our first batch of trick-or-treaters around 6. They seemed to come in waves. The last wave moved through just after 8:30 p.m.
5. The kids, as always, were very polite, as were their parents.
6. I did not take photos of the trick-or-treaters this year due to the meltdown by the millennial mom last year. Pity. I used to love taking their photos.
7. The neighbors on the corner were having a driveway party and they were the belle of the ball. Every batch of trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood came by their place, as did some of their parents and even the bicycle cops patrolling the neighborhood.
8. The real must-stop destination was the Port-A-Potty at the house under construction next door. No. 2 was the dumpster near the Port-A-Potty.
9. We gave out the good stuff this year – Snickers, Three Muskateers, M&Ms, Reese’s Cups, Smarties and Twix. I only ate about five.
10. Mom and I had our traditional Halloween night treat – Little Caeser’s pepperoni pizza. Mom hated it. She ended up eating diced melon.
11. Pickups and golf carts loaded with kids cruised by. They weren’t decorated as often as in the past.
12. One kid wore a full-body costume depicting the human musculature. When I complimented him on his costume he said, “Yeah. Sixty bucks!”
13. My favorite costume of the night – a girl wore an inflatable dragon. It even had a fan running underneath – either to keep the dragon at full inflate or keep her cool.
14. A man wearing no costume approached and explained, “I’ve been designated as the bag carrier.” I filled his bags with candy.
15. What would have made it a better Halloween? A giant cooler filled with iced beer, a grill loaded with brats and a spooky soundtrack playing.
16. Once again this year I failed to get our Halloween decorations put up. I was too sick and there were too many things going on, what with my sudden retirement and moving in with Mom.
17. There were two fireworks shows in the area. I managed to catch some spectacularly bad photos through the trees.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .