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The Last Days of American Crime
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Wikipedia article
'The Last Days of American Crime' is a 2020 American action thriller film directed by Olivier Megaton from a screenplay written by Karl Gajdusek, based on Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini's 2009 graphic novel of the same name. It stars dgar Ramrez, Anna Brewster, Michael Pitt, Patrick Bergin, and Sharlto Copley. It was panned by critics, who noted the film's release as unfortunate for coinciding with the George Floyd protests, due to its violent content and depictions of police brutality,[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-last-days-of-american-crime-movie-review-2020 Roger Ebert.com][https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/the-last-days-of-american-crime/ Empire Online][https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/last-days-of-american-crime-movie-review-netflix-1009006/ 'Last Days of American Crime' Movie Review: No. Nope. Nuh-Uh. Wrong - Rolling Stone] and holds a rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Plot
In 2024, the U.S. government prepares to activate the American Peace Initiative (API) signal, a synaptic blocker that will prevent the population from breaking the law. In Detroit, Graham Bricke leads a crew of bank robbers including his brother Rory, who begins a prison sentence. The API signal is tested while Brickes crew robs a bank, and one of the thieves is killed. Bricke lies to the Dumois crime family that he lost the stolen money, which he saves to escape to Canada, but is notified that Rory has killed himself in prison.
One week before the signals nationwide deployment, Brickes money is taken. He tortures a man named Sidell into confessing that Johnny Dee, a member of Brickes crew, betrayed him to the Dumois syndicate. Bricke leaves Sidell to die in a fiery explosion, kills Johnny, and buys a deadly neurotoxin at a bar, where he is seduced by Shelby Dupree. He meets her fianc Kevin Cash, who explains that he and Rory were used to test the signal in prison, and Rory was killed by the guards. Shelby and Kevin reveal their plan to steal over $1 billion from the citys money factory by disrupting an API signal tower and fleeing across the river to Canada.
Bricke takes over the heist, deducing that Kevin is the heir to the Dumois family. Shelby and Bricke begin an affair, and he recruits his trusted getaway driver Ross. The government is buying back criminals' ill-gotten wealth, and Shelby, a gifted hacker, prints $5 million in counterfeit bills which Bricke arranges to trade in. Following Shelby, Bricke learns she is an informant for the FBI, who threaten her younger sister to ensure her cooperation. As the citys police department prepares to become obsolete, Officer William Sawyer is forced to kill an assailant in self-defense. He joins the new law enforcement division, and receives an implant making him immune to the API signal.
Kevin takes Bricke to meet Rossi Dumois, his father. Rossi shoots and wounds Kevin, who kills him with an axe, and Kevin and Bricke raid Rossis weapons, including three EFP cone warheads. Bricke confronts Shelby for working with the FBI, but is knocked out and beaten by Lonnie, Rossis lieutenant. Shelby is taken hostage by Lonnie as Sidell, alive but disfigured, tortures Bricke and leaves him to die in a fire. Bricke is rescued by Ross and pursues Lonnie, who injects Shelby with heroin and prepares to rape her, but Bricke kills him.
On the day the signal will deploy, Ross infiltrates the money factory in a garbage truck, and Shelby subdues a systems manager at an API facility. Bricke and Kevin deliver the counterfeit $5 million to the factory and shoot their way to the vault, which they breach with the warheads. Shelby hacks the API system and disrupts the signal, allowing Bricke, Kevin, and Ross to load the truck with money and escape. Sawyer detains Shelby, and the signal resumes, incapacitating Ross and Bricke. Unaffected, Kevin kills Ross, revealing that he and Rory were forced to fight in prison by the guards, who tortured them with the API signal; Kevin learned to overcome the signal, and killed Rory. He shoots Bricke, but is killed by Shelbys FBI handlers, who tell Bricke that they will kill Shelby to close their case.
Left to die, Bricke consumes his neurotoxin; instead of killing him, it ends the signals effect on him. He kills the FBI agents and escapes in the truck full of money. Struggling against the signal, Shelby fights off Sawyer, who strangles her but is impaled on a glass shard and dies. Shelby blows up the facility, ignoring the agents preparing to shoot her. She is rescued by Bricke, and they plow through the border checkpoint into Canada. Shelby tells Bricke she loves him before he dies from his wounds, and she flees with a bag of money. Some time later, Shelby spreads Rorys ashes at a lake, and drives away with her sister to a new life in Canada.
Cast
* dgar Ramrez as Graham Bricke
* Anna Brewster as Shelby Dupree
* Michael Pitt as Kevin Cash
* Tamer Burjaq as Ross King
* Sharlto Copley as William Sawyer
* Brandon Auret as Lonnie French
* Patrick Bergin as Rossi Dumois
* Sean Cameron Michael as Pete Slatery
Production
On July 27, 2018, it was announced that dgar Ramrez would star as a career criminal Graham Bricke in the crime thriller film adaptation of the comic book 'The Last Days of American Crime' by Rick Remender, which would be directed by Olivier Megaton, screenplay written by Karl Gajdusek, set in a near future. The film would be produced by Jesse Berger through Radical Studios, Jason Michael Berman through Mandalay Pictures, and Barry Levine and Kevin Turen. In October 2018, Anna Brewster, Michael Pitt, and Sharlto Copley joined the cast of the film.
Principal photography on the film began on November 6, 2018. Filming took place in Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa.
Release
'The Last Days of American Crime' was released digitally by Netflix on June 5, 2020. It was the top-watched film on the service in its first weekend.
Reception
'Variety' wrote that critics panned the film as "a derivative work that has nothing to say" and that its timing of its release with the murder of George Floyd and the related protests was "a disaster". On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critics consensus reads: "This 'Crime' is punishment." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 15 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".
David Ehrlich of 'IndieWire' gave the film a "D" and said, "[it's] not just because Olivier Megaton's agonizingly dull Netflix feature is 149 minutes long (a crime unto itself). While there's never really a good moment to introduce a bad movie into the world, this hollow and artless dystopian heist dreck is also a victim of its own relevance." Peter Debruge of 'Variety' called the film "gory, excessive and frequently incoherent" and wrote: "In light of everything that's going on, 'The Last Days of American Crime' seems woefully out of touch, inadvertently offensive (a brutal fight scene in which Copley chokes Shelby seems oblivious to the legacy of real-world police brutality) and like some sloppy relic of what once passed for entertainment." Bilge Ebiri, writing for 'Vulture', described the film as "yet another insipidly sleazy, lizard-brain shoot-em-up that through its very dullness demonstrates how rote such ghastly fare has become in our culture", and concluded: "'The Last Days of American Crime' offers nothing you havent seen any number of times before; it just offers a lot of it."
Jesse Hassenger of 'The A.V. Club' gave the film a grade of C, writing: "In its final hour, 'The Last Days Of American Crime' finally gets down to the business of its big heist, revealing both the propulsive entertainment value the filmmakers have been inexplicably stalling and the thinness of the whole enterprise."
References
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