Give 'em Hell, Malone (2009)

Wonderful Movie

the audience applauded

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Think about an old classic detective story, preferrably taking place anywhere from 1940's to 1970's. Add some really refreshing non-PG13 violence and a constant layer of humor - not forced jokes every once in a while, but a constant weird, funny tone that is nearly always present.The characters are all really stereotypical clichés, and in the best possible way. You get the seasoned and rough good guy, a femme fatale (dressed in red, of course) and villains. A stoic one and some over the top ones. Bear in mind that this is all intended. We get to see some really fun characters. Thomas Jane fits in his role very well, as does Ving Rhames. Elsa Pataky is pretty and also bad in a way that somehow fits this crazy film. Also, Doug Hutchison gets to give a really hammy performance, he had a lot of fun with this one.At some point, the film lost its strong grip on me. Understandable, because this kind of film is extremely hard to pull off perfectly. I won't say that it falls apart, but perhaps the movie got more slow and serious when I would've preferred otherwise. Some pacing issues probably too.Besides that, I have one thing to say: I won't forget this movie 15 minutes after the end credits start to roll. It's different from the abundance of modern mediocre action thrillers in every possible way. I will remember seeing this 10 years from now.The tongue-in-cheek style makes this movie worthwhile. It's a fine line when you're trying to fit film noir and a constant humorous tone in the same film, but most of the time it works. If you're looking for something really serious, wholly original or exceptionally thrilling, look elsewhere. This feels more like a homage than anything else. Whatever the case may be, I liked it.

I looked up the word "incongruous" on one of those online dictionaries and all I found was an embedded video of Give 'em Hell, Malone playing on an endless loop. This thing has quite a few relatively clever elements but nothing whatsoever to tie them all together, producing a film that makes it about half way through on the strength of those elements and then implodes. The last half of this movie is almost amazingly terrible and you can practically see the filmmakers shrugging their shoulders as ever more stupid, illogical and arbitrary nonsense spills out onto the audience.Malone (Thomas Jane) is a hard man with a big gun making his Raymond Chandleresque way through the urban jungle. He's given a job of picking up a briefcase and finds himself the target of a slew of thugs, who he dispatches with brutal alacrity. Inside the case, Malone finds a toy elephant he calls "the meaning of love". Teaming up with the woman in red who hired him (Elsa Pataky), Malone finds himself on the run from a trio of noirish supervillains hired by crime boss Whitmore (Greg Harrison) to retrieve the case. Battling the vicious Mauler (Chris Yen), brooding Boulder (Ving Rhames) and insane Matchstick (Doug Hutchinson) in turn, with occasional stops at the nursing home so his mother (Eileen Ryan) can sew up his wounds, Malone bulldozes his way to an ending that frantically reaches for the heights of The Usual Suspects but falls to the depths of a self-referential circle jerk.Give 'em Hell, Malone appears to be the result of somebody who saw Sin City and walked away very impressed but with no understanding of how that sort of "cartoon noir" storytelling works. The result is a standard action flick with a bunch of anachronistic quirks which never have any point. For example, the characters of Malone, Boulder and Evelyn (Elsa Pataky) are straight out the 1940s in speech pattern and behavior. On the other hand, Whitmore and Malone's mother are totally modern in their words and affect. Doug Hutchinson is baldly doing an imitation of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. A guy gets set on fire and it only makes his flesh more smooth and moist. Mauler is established as a super-Ninja ass kicker only to have Malone defeat her while remaining tied up in a chair. We're shown numerous different scenarios of how Malone's family was killed and they're simultaneously played for humor and drama. A bad guy changes to a good guy with a one sentence explanation out of nowhere.The opening gun fight is extremely well done and the "cartoon noir" stylings of the film are amusing at first, but Give 'em Hell, Malone quickly falls into making too many obvious and easy jokes at the very noirish conventions it embraces. The humor in "cartoon noir" comes from how absurdly seriously it takes those conventions. When characters essentially start winking at the audience to let them in on the joke, all that's left is a lot of forced artificiality.The turning point for this movie is when Malone forces a motel clerk to admit that he's part of the scheme against him…and Malone then rents a room in the motel and stays the night. Does that make any sense? Why would you stay at a place being managed by someone who could call the bad guys and let them know where you are? The clerk never does that, which only compounds how ludicrous it is, and from that moment on these filmmakers no longer cared about any sort of internal logic or consistency in their story.Give 'em Hell, Malone is neither fish nor fowl. It never figures out why it does the things it does and gets smothered by that incomprehension. The first half isn't an utter disaster, but I can't imagine anyone sticking around 'til the end and feeling satisfied with how it turns out

Russell Mulcahy(Highlander)directs this bloody gangster opus which follows Thomas Jane as he works his way through the crime syndicate of Gregory Harrison, over a toy elephant(!)found in a steel case. The elephant is known throughout the movie as "the meaning of love." Jane is costumed in 40s Bogie attire as the hard-to-kill Malone, having to stay one step ahead of Harrison and his hired killers, Ving Rhames(as Boulder)and the absolutely insane Doug Hutchison(as Matchstick, notorious for burning his parents alive, narrowly escaping the house, suffering hideous burns on his own face in the process). The eye candy of the movie is Elsa Pataky(striking in blood red lipstick), sliding smoothly into the sultry Film Noir moll role, as Evelyn, whose motivations remain suspect as she asks Malone to help free her kidnapped brother, killed by another assassin, a Japanese girl named Mauler(Chris Yen). French Stewart shows up as a bad lounge comic who also works as a stool pigeon for Harrison and ends up on Malone's bad side for almost getting him(and his alcoholic mom)killed. Rhames only works for Harrison because the crime lord pays to keep Boulder's wife alive on life-support. GIVE 'EM HELL MALONE is a homage to those detective noir films, where the film's hero is a flawed man you only root for because everyone else is so evil. Malone is always having to constantly look over his shoulder for either a knife to his back or bullets aimed in his direction at all times. Even Evelyn can not be trusted. Jane's Malone is the usual tough-guy archetype, good with a gun, takes a licking and keeps on ticking. The film sure as hell opens with a bang as Malone attains the case with the elephant for his boss, Murphy(Leland Orser), annihilating a whole army of Harrison's men with plenty of Hong Kong John Woo balletic gunplay, bodies torn to bloody shreds as bullets damage and destroy in grand style. This would make an ideal double header with the equally ultra-violent, cartoony, gratuitous crime actioner, SHOOT 'EM UP. Easily the most entertaining character in the movie is Matchstick because of how batsh#t crazy he is(funny is how he progressively becomes more worse for wear due to his inability to finish Malone off, his face set on fire on more than one occasion).

Former Detective and now freelance vigilante (for lack of a better description) Malone (Jane) believes he was set up and he needs to find out why the box everyone is trying to get is so important. Watching this movie was like watching a comic book come to life. The dialogue, costumes, and cars from the 1940s made it so. I know many action movies are based on comic book super heroes, but this was going a bit too far and I almost shut it down. And, as far as I know there was no comic book based on the Malone character (I could be wrong about it, but…….I'm just saying). There is so much shooting and killing in the beginning, sleepy time was coming upon me. But, nothing else was on tap so I stayed with it. Actually, it was quite entertaining and not bad at all. Yes, the shootings and killings went on unabated, but there was a story in there too. Honest. For those of you (and me too) who forgot who Thomas Jane is let me fill us all in. He is the Punisher in those other movies actually based upon The Punisher comic book. Well, he may as well have been the Punisher in this one too. But as he says, he is a hard one to kill and yet, he does take some pretty hard whacks, and gunshots too. But, not to worry his mother tends to his gunshot wounds. This Malone character doesn't mess around and neither does Doug Hutchinson appropriately called Matchstick, who likes to light fires every place he goes to kill people. Ving Rhames is a mountain of a man and if I heard it right, his character, Boulder, used to work with Malone back in the day on the job (Police work). The only thing he is afraid of is the story he believes that Malone actually reached in and took the hearts out of the people who killed his whole family and ate the hearts. And, let's not forget Gregory Harrison (as Whitmore), from some medical TV show back in the day. Well, he's a meanie in here and likes to use a baseball bat. This is non-stop action, shootings and killings,but there is a story in here. Honest. You just have to stay with it. Okay, some twists too. A meaningless note: sometimes Thomas Jane sounds like James Arness You know from Gunsmoke back in the day. Oh, one more thing. There is a note at the end of the movie that says: TO BE CONTINUED. Can't wait.Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: Yes, a brief shot of Elsa Pataky in the shower. Language: Yes.