If you’re anything like me, you like to end a nice long day of crushing it at your dead-end job by perusing Tubi for movies that you remember seeing the covers of at Blockbuster when you were a kid. The idea is, if you manage to see them all one day, you’ll finally fill that deep, dark void inside of you.
So yeah, I decided to watch this one with Billy Zane, you know the one where the cover is him running all cool with a metallic briefcase in his hand and there’s a sniper’s target on him? Opens with a really gratuitous, sepia-toned sex scene with an actress who looks like the big sister in Troll 2, but it’s not on her IMDB, so who knows? We’re talking full frontal by the time we get to the First Assistant Director credit (Tanner Skinmintz if you were curious). You know that one?
Right, so everything was going according to plan in regards to my catatonic enjoyment of the proceedings, the small bombardment of texts from my mom reminding me that I still owed her $2,700 notwithstanding. But by the time we reached the end of the first act, it’s revealed that this one last job at the Monte Carlo International Banking Institute was only going to net $29,000. And while I initially found that funny, it’s actually very distracting now.
Listen, I’m aware that inflation is a thing, but why is everyone in the film referring to $29,000 as a life-changing amount of money? There’s no way Billy Zane’s going to be able to retire, move to Panama, and start a banana farm as he post-coitally suggests to Jennifer Jason-Leigh in a hammock. Also, there are 5 of them! That’s like, $5,800 per person. Holy shit, Ernie Hudson just shot someone in the head for $5,800! These guys are literally risking their lives for 3 months’ worth of rent.
I can’t tell if this movie is just poorly written or if our economy is just that irreparably fucked. Like, now I’m looking up inflation rates on my phone which is not at all the vibe I was trying to cultivate here. It’s not like this movie is that old; it’s only been… 35 years? Fuck that’s old! Fuck, I’m old!
I just paid $81 for GrubHub, and I’m the poorest person I know. How could our economy let this happen? I should be running the goddamn banana farm! Do you realize how powerful I could be if I lived inside this movie? I could have Ernie Hudson kill my mom for the amount of money she’s asking me to pay for barely crashing her car. Reality is such bullshit.