Brett Ratner | 93 mins | TV | 12 / PG-13
I’ve never had as much of a problem with Brett Ratner as some others. I quite enjoyed the first two Rush Hour films (though, admittedly, I was relatively young) and also liked Red Dragon (though, at the time, I hadn’t seen Silence of the Lambs), and would lay the blame for X-Men: The Last Stand at the feet of the producers who decided to save all the Wolverine backstory stuff for a spin-off, in the process disconnecting the threequel from the Wolverine-obsessed first two — what was left was pretty decent, if you ask me. After the Sunset, on the other hand, is like Woody Harrelson’s character: not much cop.
The story concerns a retired jewel thief goaded into performing one last job by the FBI officer who never caught him (that’s Harrelson’s character — you see, he’s not much of a cop! Geddit?) A decent enough premise, suggesting something Ocean’s Eleven-like; but someone didn’t think this was enough story — or, perhaps, couldn’t come up with a complex-enough security system for the jewel — and so tacked on a buddy comedy. It’s a pretty illogical one as well: the two men hate each other, so why would they spend so much time together? It feels like padding around the heist plot, but takes up more screen time. Other subplots, like Don Cheadle as the unspecified Caribbean island’s resident gangster, who wants the jewel to fund something or other, also don’t go anywhere.
Each of these plots seem to have originated in different films — some serious, some light, some thoroughly comedic. When stuck together they make for a constantly varying tone, and it’s difficult to work out which was the intended one. By the end there’s so much going on (though, barely) that the ending goes on forever, wrapping up its various near-unrelated threads in as drawn-out a manner as possible, apparently just to make the film hit a decent length. The final twist is almost good, but remains a bit underdeveloped and consequently isn’t clever enough to be worthwhile — it winds up as just another pointless extension.
Despite all this it does have its moments, thanks primarily to a skilled cast… not that I can remember any specific good bits now. It does at least mean that, if you can put the tonal and structural oddities to one side, it can be a moderately pleasant way to pass an hour and a half.
100Films.co.uk 