Reactionary Reviews: 180 | Dir. Alex Yazbek | Netflix
At precisely 38:22 the newish Netflix algo-scripted revenge pile on, 180, falls apart with a single shot.
Two men are fighting inside a fallen-down filing cabinet in a super art-directed filing cabinet graveyard (that the two men couldn't actually fit inside the filing cabinet based on exterior dimensions, that the interior of the filing cabinet is big enough for the rough and tumble, and lit orange from an impossible angle while shut... these things we will ignore). From the outside we see it vibrate with the ongoing battle, a single shot rings out, piercing the top of the cabinet, the path of the shot lit by a bright white light from the cabinet's interior. What the actual.
That 180 is so gorgeously shot and over art-directed is its greatest downfall. If it just had the decency to look like crap, or at least in some way acknowledge what a tropey piece of shit it is, then maybe it would have worked. It just does not. But hey, at least the actors and crew are getting paid. and someone has to make exposition-led eye candy for the constant partial-attention market. So here we are.
180 is fuelled by an extraordinary coincidence: a man in a traffic jam is almost hijacked by two men who also work for the crime boss with whose henchman he later, after a traffic snafu, gets into a fight, that takes the life of his son. From then on it's a relentless parade of laboured broadcasting the next story beat until some inevitable conclusion that I didn't bother waiting for.
He forgets to change banks, and his son's medical aid is held up, so he gets his brother to bring the R80k cash from the safe at his burger joint, and we see a gun. Chekhov rolls in his grave.
Quick question: if there's R80k in the safe why are they buying dodgy chicken? Why was the dodgy chicken thing even in the script? Why was the fighting with the cricket coach over the bullying thing in the script?
Later, during a tussle for the gun, he shoots his brother in the foot and leaves him bleeding. A man so wound up by dodgy chicken and cricket coaches that he expects his brother (who went to prison for him) to get his own ride to hospital. A man enraged by traffic stops for burst water mains (that strangely stick out of the street in the middle of of dual carriage way, a u-bend of blue piping at waist level so we can clearly see BURST WATER PIPE), a man boiling over at petty corruption and infuriated by long lines at the traffic department, simply a man who cannot hack the shit ordinary folk endure as a matter of course.
A man who, in the opening line of the film, says to his son regarding a stuffed animal: “Aren't we getting a little bit old for it?” It's the question I keep asking myself while watching 180. Aren't we getting a bit old for this shit?
Anyway, his son is shot. His wife acts the fuck out of a yoga session. Ululating underscores grief. Everyone is corrupt, the city's infrastructure is falling apart, a detective does her best frustrated sigh as the docket goes missing, the police are overworked but in love or some shit. So he takes the law into his own hands. Crowd pleasing violence ensues. So far, so Falling Down.
Just another good man in an expensive suit with a big house who is pushed too far. Pesky poor people — I mean, villains.
The essential problem is that the lead character of 180 is so reactive and tortured that he actually deserves an ass-whipping. Oh, poor fucking me with my badly designed burger franchise and luxurious home and R80k-a-month medical aid. While Falling Down was ambiguous, with D-Fens finally coming to terms with the consequences of his reactive nature and taking himself out, forty-five minutes in to 180, I was wishing that whatsisname would do the same, and stat.
I'm guessing that since the taxi boss underpays everyone, and everyone keeps remarking on it, that's what eventually leads to his downfall. And the junior cop uncovers the senior cop's corruption, and he dies confessing in her arms after taking a bullet for her. Nothing about this movie compelled me to give enough of a fuck to find out.
False note art direction abounds: off-code traffic hazard warnings, bus stops with working florescent lighting , the line-up room at the police station, the murder board in the detective's office with the generic words “TAXI WARS” in bold above a mishmash of random photos.
The most telling moment of 180 comes early on: an establishing wide crane shot of the taxi boss's scrapyard with an artfully distressed, non-rusty sign, a letter hanging off, a painfully obvious attempt to signal neglect that instead tells us everything we need to know about the film, a sign that states CRAP YARD.
As the only sympathetic character in the film, Karvas, says, sorta, during the red-light tussle: “Walk away, just walk away.”