BWare

Is it too old-man-yelling-at-clouds to point out that just obvious stupid errors completely pull me out of the movie you are trying to get me to watch? Maybe Netflix doesn’t care, because it happens 15 minutes in, so it’s already counted as a view for their made-up numbers. To wit:

“Outside the Wire”: “How many hours do you have piloting the drone?” “Sir, Fifty-seven thousand, sir!”
Come on. Chuck Yeager had 14,000 over a whole career. This dude is no older than 30. From my extensive study of the Fighter Pilot Podcast, it’s rare for pilots to get over 2000 in a career. Or just do the fucking math. A work year is 2000 hours. So that’s over 28 years if you flew every hour you were at work and there was no pre-flight briefings, or after-action reports. It’s the military, so that seems unlikely, but say you could do 4000 hours without being so tired that you didn’t fly your (inflation-adjusted) $135M MQ-9 Reaper into the ground. That’s still a solid 14 years. And if you keep the same job in the military for 14 years, you’re probably not very good at it (you didn’t get promoted), and you’re older than 30.

“The Vast of Night”: WOTW (“War of the Worlds”, cute, get it!? GETIT?!). I know I’m an old, and the kids don’t listen to the radio anymore, but with few exceptions, W stations are east of the Mississippi. There are no W stations in New Mexico.

“The Old Guard”: Your thousand year old warriors go into an enclosed space not just willingly, but eagerly, and there’s no overwatch [1] to keep them from getting ambushed from behind? You’re worried about cameras, making a huge plot point of deleting a photo on a cell phone five minutes in, but you don’t wear black face-hiding balaclavas in action, like every cop in existence for the last decade? You walk right up to a camera and stare into it just to make sure they got a good look? The guys who just shot you weren’t warned that you were immortal and self-healing, and just stand around high-fiving instead of flex-cuffing you? I have no tactical training, but all those things make my skin crawl.

“Heist“: This is one of my favorite movies, but it’s a great example of the cardinal sin of big heists. Millions of dollars of gold is really fucking heavy, as is millions of dollars of cash [2]. They make a big deal about getting the weight right sometimes, like when they are loading it into the van, and melting it down, but not right when they are wheeling around stove-sized containers full of it like it was nothing, and trying to convince someone that it’s hidden on a boat, or driving off with it in an old Ford. The boat would sink. The Ford would have its headlights pointing straight up. Also that customs/freight-forwarder stuff is complete bullshit, especially for an international flight.

 
Airplane movie reviews:

Outside the Wire: Couldn’t finish it.
 

The Vast of Night: Fast forwarded through a lot of the moving camera work, exposition, and Sorkin-talking over each other (people didn’t do that in the Southwest in the late 50s and early 60s). The only person who dressed like Buddy Holly was Buddy Holly, and there was only one of those. Everyone else did not wear cool clothes. Still not good.
 

The Old Guard: Good bits interspersed with dumbness and cartoonish villainy.
 

Heist: One of my favorite movies ever, and the best roles by Hackman, Lindo, and de Vito.
“Everybody needs money, that’s why they call it money!”
“You want to hear my last words?” “I just did.”

 
 
[1] See also Outside The Wire above.
[2] “Heat” gets this right, mostly.