Spiral (2021)

Episode 344, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well Craig, this week you picked the movie, uh, in the movie that you picked, so I was very excited about it. 2020 Ones Spiral from the book of Saw starring Chris Rock of All People. And you know how much I love the SAW movies.

I think I’ve talked about that here many, many times. That was just a. Man, it was just so great. Those first, I don’t know what they were, five or six years when they were coming out every year on Halloween. And I would just go by myself and I would sit down with some popcorn I couldn’t get, at first I couldn’t get anybody to go with me.

And then after that I just didn’t want anybody to go with me cuz it’d been such a tradition. Mm-hmm. And I just sat and I enjoyed the toastiness and the, all the traps and the gore and all that stuff. I just, it just really spoke to me. The first movie just blew me away. Just, I just loved it. I loved the puzzle aspect of it.

I loved all that stuff. So to find out that they were making a saw movie, but they weren’t calling, it saw nine and, and it started Chris Rock and it’s called Spiral. I’m thinking, how are they gonna make this different and all that. So I was very interested to see it and I was really happy that you chose it.

And of course this is my first time seeing it. So What made you decide to pick this one this week? You know, that I 

Craig: just, horror is pretty much all I watch. Uh, and honestly at this point, I will take just about anything I can get. That’s not to say that this, I scraped this from the bottom of the barrel. I am daily kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel cause I’ve just seen so much.

But this was one of those happy surprises where I was just scrolling through Hulu of all places, cuz they’re not known really for their horror election, but Right. It, it popped up, it was there and I was interested in it too for the same reasons that you were, I was never as big a fan of the franchise as you were.

I thought the first movie was clever and then after that it was just, everyone had to be, how can we make it more intense and more gross and Right. Uh, and I, I, I get it. And, and that’s admirable. I, I suppose I, I, I’m just not really a. Big Gore hound, like that’s not what excites me. It doesn’t particularly bother me, but that’s not what I’m going into a movie for.

So. Right. And, and plus as it went on, like, but I, I kept up with them for like three or four and then somewhere around four or five it, they got so convoluted that I just couldn’t Oh yeah. Eat. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t even keep up with who was who and what was connected to what, like they would do those famous, you know, montages at the end that would like explain everything and I’d be like, I still don’t get it.

I dunno what’s going. Oh my God. 

Todd: Well, I mean, as much as a fan of this, of the movies as I am, I only see each one of them once. Well, actually they, I think I’ve seen the original and, uh, maybe the first and second one a couple times each, but I’m with you on that. They get so convoluted. I mean, it’s obvious, you know, when they wrote the first one, Lee Wano and, um, and, and James won when they, when they did the first ones, like kind of their first big movie and mm-hmm.

Uh, you know, They weren’t necessarily intending to make sequels. And so in order to make sequels and keep jigsaw in there, I mean, you know, like it just went to extreme lengths and he’s got it apprentices and uhhuh. He’s, he’s got these elaborate things that he’s planned for well after his death that somehow worked together.

Right, right. I mean, it’s, it’s not only convoluted, but it gets kind of unbelievable that all this stuff could fit together so well. But for me anyway, I don’t know, I just see the movies as as big puzzles. I’m with you. I’m not a big Gore hound either. When I saw the first one, I was pretty shocked. I guess that was the beginning of the torture porn genre or whatever was it was around there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where suddenly him and, and um, and with hostel, with Eli Roth and them. Right, right. Like, suddenly there were these movies that were just, not only were they just a bit more extreme than anything that we’ve ever seen. They just lingered and kind of like, This very hyperrealistic. Yeah. Human pain, but also they were pretty mainstream movies.

Right. 

Craig: I mean, from a historical perspective, it’s really interesting because I feel like what they were doing is they were really pushing boundaries. Hmm. And for whatever reason in that time, the MPA or whoever was just allowing those boundaries to be pushed. Like it’s unbelievable, really. I know the stuff, you know, you think about the stuff in the eighties and nineties, think West Cravens battles with the M P A A, anything that they would’ve been trying to pass off for an R rating would’ve been tame compared to all of this saw slash oh God hostile stuff.

And yet this, this stuff. Got through, but, and whatever, I mean, it’s just change. I still don’t 

Todd: understand why I don’t, I really don’t even the director of this, I was reading some interviews, uh, Darren, uh, Lynn Bowsman directed this one. He also directed the first two sequels, I think. Yeah. Uh oh no. First three sequels really.

Uh, two, three, and four. And he, he even said, he said there were a couple scenes in this movie where they had to cut. He said they had to cut about three minutes worth of gore out. And he said, honestly, I don’t understand why. I think it’s, I don’t either. It’s just a different time. He said, if you look at even like American Horror Story, he said, there is worse stuff that has been put on TV in the last few years.

Than what we had in this movie that we were asked to cut out. So maybe things are kind of going backward back a little bit, you know, to a more, slightly more conservative as far as the MPA is concerned. I don’t know. Who knows? 

Craig: I mean, we’ve talked about that too. I, I think the MPA is on life support. Like, I, I just don’t even think that there really a significant entity anymore.

Nobody, they’re 

Todd: not relevant, really. You 

Craig: know? I mean, right. Yeah. But, but, so anyway, so this was a happy surprise. It popped up and I had wanted to see it too, for the same reasons that you did. I was interested in that. It was presumably, I mean, I really didn’t know all that much about it, but presumably kind of its own standalone story in the saw world, and that mm-hmm.

Appealed to me like, oh, okay. If I can start fresh with a new story, right. I’m, I’m down. It’s 

Todd: kind of a way of rebooting it without actually rebooting it. Right. It’s sort of like, yes, bringing it back without having to. Keep the same tired formula of the other stuff. Right. Right. They’re not right. In this case, it’s almost like a copycat killer.

Yeah, 

Craig: it is. And I was also intrigued by the casting of Chris Rock. It was weird, you know, and, and I, I think everybody thought it was a surprise when it was announced that he was, uh, involved and, and not only starring in it, but writing and executive producing. Like, what? Yeah. Like that, that Chris Rock.

Right. But I was intrigued because I, I’m a fan of Chris Rock. I think he’s a really funny guy. Um, and I was really interested to see how that, like, like is he gonna bring that Chris Rock thing to this movie or is it gonna be like, like you’ve never seen Chris Rock before? Like, why I didn’t know what it was gonna be.

Todd: I was thinking about this, this whole time for reasons that I’m sure we’ll get into, but like Chris Rock and Jim Carey. I’m trying to think of any of the other major a-list Saturday Night live level comedians of that era that ever jumped into serious acting. Think, if I’m not mistaken, this is Chris Rock’s first foray into serious acting 

Craig: that I’m aware of.

I mean, he was in like New Jack City or something, but he just had like, I think he was like an expert, had a bit roll or something like that. 

Todd: It, it, Jim Carey did the Truman Show and kind of blew us all away. It was like, wow, this guy, he can play drama. Yeah, he, he really can. He really can. He’s quite good.

Chris Rock on the other hand, uh, was struggling through this film and Oh God, was this, I just, I think it’s been a while before I’ve seen a movie that just shocked me at how bad. It was, I’m sorry, but I’m just laying all out there right now. I could not believe how uncomfortably bad this movie made me feel like I was just, I’m watching it and I was just almost embarrassed that this thing existed and that all these people participated in it.

I felt so sorry for them because it’s so bad. 

Craig: That is hilarious. That’s so funny. Before I respond to that, I also wanna give Adam Sandler props. He can do it too. He’s one of those funny SNL guys, you’re, he can do drama too. Um, I was really interested to see, cuz I started watching it and you know, you, I’m sure the audience knows too, we’re on opposite sides of the world.

So like, literally my day is your night and vice versa. And so yeah, I’m watching it and I wanna text you as I’m watching it and I know you’re in bed,

like I just wanna be, I just wanna be texting you like. What is happening? Like what, what is this movie? I, uh, I was so surprised by it. Uh, but I’m really ex Now that I know that you think that it’s awful. I’m really, really excited to talk about it because I liked it and I can’t figure out why, because there’s no, why there’s no good reason to like it, but I did.

Oh 

Todd: my God. I, I just don’t understand, I don’t understand it from my perspective. Alright, this guy who’s done three of the saw movies who arguably sort of set the standard for how the saw movies should be laid out, kind of like breaks the rules. Not only that, but in just basic filmmaking ways. One of the biggest problems I had with this movie was, okay, and I, and I think this was done intentionally.

All right. If you read interviews with them and you read what they have to say about it, they were like, we were really excited to take the SAW franchise in a new direction and make it like more like a police procedural uhhuh, because you know, the police have always been a part of the saw, which is true.

Yeah, right, right. There’s always some point in which the cops are trying to hunt down the killer and they’re always a step or two behind and all that. So we just thought we’d bring that to the forefront. So they do this and it becomes what is essentially the most hilariously bad police procedural, the most simplistic.

Stupid. It’s really bad. Like it was written by a 12 year old who, who watched some police procedurals who just put all the cliche pieces together. All right. They put that down and the only connection it ends up having with the soft franchise is that the people who die are in these like weird saw traps, right?

That’s it. All. The only connection has is the people who die are in these weird saw traps. The clincher on it is, is that all of the tension that you get with the SAW movies, which is, oh, they’re in these traps. They have a decision to make, they’ve gotta like do this kind of weird puzzley thing or do something really horrible to themselves in order to, to save themselves is completely lost because in every single instance, you know they’re dead.

You see them get into the trap, then it cuts away, and then the next thing you know, the police have discovered a body and they’re hurrying off to the scene and they find the body, and then we get a flashback. To that person in the trap. So there’s, there’s no question as to whether they’re gonna get out or not.

We know every single 

Craig: time they’re gonna die. Oh, that only happens that one time with the dude with the finger trap. 

Todd: It happened every time. Every time. Except for the end, the very end. Uh, oh God. There’s, 

Craig: I, there’s nothing good about it, but 

Todd: there’s nothing good about this movie. 

Craig: It’s, uh, it really, like you said, like a 12 year old No, I, I think it’s like somebody went to chat g p t and was like, yes, give us a saw movie, but it’s a, a Please procedural starring Chris Rock.

And this is exactly what AI came up with. Yeah. And it’s hilariously bad. Like that question of what is it gonna be like, is it gonna be Chris Rock? Like you’ve never seen him? No. It is just going to be Chris Rock. In a serious movie. 

Todd: It’s, it’s, no, it’s gonna be Chris Rock. Trying really, really hard not to crack a smile in a serious movie, because that is what his acting looks like.

He’s trying so hard to not crack a smile that he looks uncomfortably meme through the whole thing. He’s just shouting at people and he’s got really bizarre looks on his face. There’s one point where he gets in someone’s face and yells at them. The camera lingers a little too long and you get this cartoonish eye twitch.

Did you catch that? No. Oh my God. Because, you know, I love Chris Rock, by the way. I freaking love him. I thought his latest comedy special was one of the funniest things I’d seen. He’s hilarious. And. And the thing that I always think about, what I see Chris Rock in the comedy special is I don’t think I’ve ever seen Chris Rock without a smile on his face.

You know? Yeah. You know how people have like a bitchy resting face like Chris Rock has the opposite, whatever the opposite of a bitchy resting face, a happy resting face, Chris Rock. I think his face is just naturally, his muscles just naturally contort him into a smile just when he’s sitting at home thinking of nothing.

And so to see him in this trying to look mean, he’s trying so hard, God bless him, and it just, It just feels awkward. It looks awkward, and sometimes it just looks ridiculous 

Craig: sometimes. Okay. So, so when he’s just being like the hard-nosed cop, that the, those parts didn’t bother me so much. I even thought, you know, there are people like this who are, you know, kind of like gruff and serious, but they’re also really cynical.

And so they, you know, they use a lot of sarcasm and cynicism. Like, uh, I can buy that. He’s maybe a little, you know, funnier than most of these guys would be. But in the serious moments, which there aren’t a whole lot of, But there are a couple of the serious moments where I’m like, oh, this is just painfully, painfully bad.

Yeah. Like there’s, there’s, there’s one scene that’s a flashback, so you get to see it a couple of times where he’s a cop and hi, he’s got a whole backstory. I’m sure we’ll get into it, but like, his old partner was corrupt and, and shot a witness. And you, you see this happen in flashback and you see Chris Rock run in and go like, oh no, what happened?

Like, and, and it’s just the, oh God, it’s terrible. It looks like they, like they’re shooting a commercial with somebody they pulled out of the mall like it’s, oh boy, that’s terrible. It’s really, really bad. Now that being said, the whole genesis of this movie is that comedian, Chris Rock likes saw movies being an Aless celebrity.

He called up the producers and was like, I’d like to do it. Saw movie. And they were like, okay. They couldn’t 

Todd: say no. He said, here’s my pitch. And everybody was like, we love it. And then he just, all right, he did it. Let’s do it. 

Craig: Poor guy. And, and he, I don’t even know if IMDB gives him a writing credit, but, uh, he clearly wrote a lot of this, at least his own stuff.

You have to just play his introduction. Yes, because it’s standup comedy. It is. He just straight up does a standup comedy routine for the first three or four minutes of the show, Forrest Gump with special needs, man. What, what was the name of the girl? Jenny. Jenny. He did everything for Jenny. This mother did some shit.

He jogged across the whole country. He beat China in ping pong. You know, hard. That shit is, he is a war hero. Who the is nicer than Poors Gump, his best friend was a er in a white boy with no legs. He made a billion dollars selling shrimp. And she still wouldn’t . Hey, eventually they got together. Yeah. After she got aids, as soon as she got aids, she’s like, Hey, Flores, 

Todd: it’s a hundred percent Chris Rock for the first, like five to almost 10 minutes.

Really? Like when he meets his new partner and all that, he’s kind of being well wise ass to him. It, it just sounds, you’re right. It just like pulled straight out of his comedy routine. And I did read that, that he did, like the director was saying that he was coming up with stuff or on the fly he rewrote a lot of the things, like he was very actively involved in the writing.

They said he agonized over scenes and stuff. Like I just, Chris Rock, he’s, he’s such a hard worker. He cared so much about this project. He just put his all into every single scene we did. And I’m thinking, Oh man, I just feel bad talking about how bad this is. You know, cuz I love the guy so 

Craig: much, but see, and maybe it’s my love for him, I don’t know because like ultimately I thought like I enjoyed it.

I, but I think part of the reason I was enjoying it, on the one hand it is intentionally funny. Like it’s Chris Rock, he’s crack of it all. Jokes like just crack through the whole thing. He’s cracking jokes and they’re like ridiculous scenes. Just absolutely. Stupid. Stupid. Yes. That, that are like out of a buddy cop comedy.

Todd: Yeah. But, but out of place, 

Craig: existing. Right. It, it doesn’t make any sense. I’m ta I’m thinking specifically, there’s one point where he and his new partner are searching for information or something and they get tipped off to this drug dealer and it’s a meth dealer and they pull up and Chris rock’s like, so do you know how this works?

And the partner’s like, oh yeah, this is a meth house. They send down a bucket and you send up some money and, uh, they send down some meth and Chris rock’s. Like somebody’s been watching the wire like. That joke is so ironic because like, yeah. The writers of this movie have been watching The Wire. It is such a stupid Yeah.

Set up. And then it’s a whole shtick where Chris Rock puts on a ghetto character and is like trying to scam for meth and it’s huge. It is a, it is a blatantly comedic scene in what is otherwise a very serious horror movie. It’s weird. Yeah. 

Todd: Well, there’s so much of this. He, he wanted to do this movie about police brutality and make a point and all that, which I’m kind of behind.

I thought it sounded like an interesting direction, but then the way that it comes across everything is just so on the nose. Everything is so cliche. Everything is so laughably like this police force. Is so corrupt. Oh God. Like every, that’s one of them. They’re like cartoon cor. It’s like the an maniacs, every single one of them running around openly shooting, you know, innocent people and things like that.

And they just laugh about how they cover it up. I mean, if you’re trying to make a point, you know, if you’re trying to have some social commentary here, you need to have something believable. And this is so on the nose that there’s nothing believable about it. It just plays as a dumb nineties straight to video police procedural.

Craig: Well, and like you said, everything is so cliche and stereotypical. Mm-hmm. Like Chris Rock is, you know, uh, he’s disgruntled and he can’t trust anybody on this team or whatever. And which he shouts at them all, like, every few minutes he yells at them, I can’t trust you. Like, he, like just, just open animus between him and everybody else.

And I guess it all stems from the fact that, uh, five years ago or something, I don’t know, maybe even longer than that, like 13, 15 years ago, something like that, his, uh, partner was corrupt and shot a witness and he turned him in and like that, he turned his back on the team like he wasn’t loyal or whatever.

And now, 15 years later, they’re all still pissed about it. He’s still pissed about it. He’s also Okay. Before I, before I go to the next one, the, the captain, it’s just, it, it is like, it’s in any other like comedy cop movie where the captain just all, all his dialogue is yelled at the top of his lungs. Yes.

Like the, they do that here, except with a sexy lady, but she’s the same character. Like she’s constantly just yelling and we have to be a team and, uh, uh, it’s just so, so silly and my favorite part that I had no idea. And so when it happened, I was like, what? Chris Rock’s dad was the former captain and he is played by Samuel L.

Jackson of all people giving his best Samuel L. Jackson. I told Alan that I was talking about the movie and I was like, um, and Samuel L. Jackson today, he’s so good. He’s so Samuel L. Jackson and Alan’s like, Is Samuel L. Jackson ever anything but Samuel Jackson. I was like, no, I love that. Never really.

Todd: It’s so great. He just gets to play himself. Yeah. And collect a paycheck. I really admire that man. Oh God. 

Craig: Oh yeah. He’s great. He’s hilarious too. And he’s funny in this movie, but like, ugh, I, I’m always, you know, nervous about stereotyping anybody, but when people play into, I feel like they’re playing into certain stereotypes here.

Yes. When Chris Rock comes home to his own apartment, which is of course like this big beautiful studio, apartment, all brick walls and stuff. Interesting. Like lighting. Oh, that’s so silly. He comes around the corner and we are shocked to see Samuel Jackson sitting there. And of course they’re father and son, which we learn after they’re done pointing guns at each other and, but then they’re whole.

Scene. Oh. Felt like an episode of Stanford and Sun. Like, oh, it was so weird. Oh, 

Todd: so weird. I don’t even know how to pinpoint why I couldn’t 

Craig: tell if it was supposed to be jokey. Like I think it 

Todd: was jigsaw copycat. 

Craig: That could be difficult. What are you saying? Nothing. Just, you know, being lead detective outta responsibility.

You got a problem with that or you just scared I’m gonna embarrass you. See that right there? This ain’t about you. You always making shit about you. That’s the shit that ruins your career and your marriage. So now you’re giving fatherly advice. What you talking about Willis? These were both very intelligent men and same, and, and good actors and have been in the industry forever.

They’re not novices. They know what they’re doing. And this had to have been played for comedy. It, it just had to have 

Todd: been. You know, I don’t, I guess, but the thing, okay, so the thing is that his father was the former police chief, and he eventually got kicked out. And then his second in command, who was the woman you were talking about, become, became the police chief.

And so much of this movie is doled out over time that we are always kind of confused as to what went on and what 

Craig: happened now. And it’s, it’s dolled out over time in really clunky flashbacks. Really 

Todd: clunky, like just random flashbacks. Just suddenly there’s a flashback connected to nothing, just suddenly, boom, we’re in a flashback, but we don’t get all the flashbacks.

Craig: Right. And why are we parsing it out? Yeah. It, it’s not like there’s some big mystery really that gets uncovered until the very, very end. But you could have just given us all that exposition at once. Yes. Like we didn’t need to see it every few minutes. 

Todd: Well, that’s the thing, like of course with a saw movie, there’s mystery, there’s things you don’t know.

You know, like a couple of the saw movies like, or many of them, right? Like the characters who are in there, they don’t even know how they’re related until later, you know, like Right, right. Like they don’t even know why they’re all in there. But these are not those things. No. These are just basic information that we could have learned about all the characters in the beginning.

It would’ve made things much less confusing. Right, right. Honestly, I would argue would’ve added to the enjoyment of the movie. You don’t just put mystery in for the sake of mystery. It’s, it’s frustrating. And so we hear illusions to people and things that happened and oh, his dad was sort of kicked off and there’s something that happened with his partner and there was corruption and whatever.

But like it takes forever for us to find out what this is, and it’s kind of confusing how it’s doled out. And then you’re just like, oh, okay. So what happened was his partner showed up to question a witness who had witnessed some, another policeman. Who had done something. What was it? I don’t remember it.

It doesn’t, I don’t know. It doesn’t even matter. I don’t even think we know. And, uh, when the witness said, yeah, I saw that policeman do this and I’m happy to testify against him, officer, then his partner just pulls out his gun and shoots him dead in front of his son. He drops a gun there by the guy. And then Chris Rock runs in says, what happened?

What happened? He’s like, oh, oh, he pulled a gun on me and shot me. The, it’s obvious, I think only Chris Rock’s character sees the kid. So he kind of peeks around the corner where the kid is cowering and does like a shh kind of thing, like don’t come out. And then later on, Chris Rock turns this guy in, says that he did this thing and he gets excoriated for it.

And then somehow, I don’t remember exactly how Samuel Jackson, Chris Rock’s father, who was the, the captain. Gets angry at another 

Craig: guy. And because everybody hated him, then he, he was in some situa not, I’m talking about Chris Rock. And so he was in a dangerous situation. He called for backup and they ignored him.

Jesus, dick ignored him, right? They were right there. They could have helped, and they just ignored him. And, uh, he ended up getting shot. And, um, Samuel Jackson comes and does this ridiculous scene where he, he wants to know who you know, was closest, uh, and who ignored the call for backup or whatever, and is he’s gonna check the records and as soon as he finds out he’s gonna put a bullet in the head of whoever it was.

And then this one cop, like, kind of Shys way is like, oh, it was you, right? And it was this guy, but he like beats the crap out of him. He’s like, you’re done. And like, what is happening here? And, and they never. Uh, in my mind I’m thinking, oh, well that must be why Samuel l Jackson’s not the captain anymore, but they never allude to that.

They never explained it. Really. No. I I assumed that maybe he would get in trouble for beating up that guy, but they never said that or showed 

it. 

Todd: And I mean, let’s just talk about how stupid all this is. I mean, well, hold on, hold 

Craig: on. I wanted, I, we’ve done a good job of setting it up, but I feel like at this point, if you haven’t seen the movie and you care about.

Like the mystery Stop now. Yeah, stop. Because I don’t, I don’t know how we can, I really don’t even know how we can move forward with the plot without spoiling it pretty much right away. Because one of my, one of the things that I was so excited to talk about seriously, turn it off. Cause I’m about to spoil it here in two seconds.

It is so blatantly obvious who the killer is within like the first 15 minutes. Yes. 

Todd: Yes, exactly. I I called it a hundred percent. I mean, there’s no, there’s no question who it could be at the, yeah, yeah. There. So there was one little 

Craig: thing that happened, but it was a little thing 

Todd: that I’ve seen it bazillion times and I was like, 

Craig: oh, he’s the killer.

Obviously. Yep. And then more things kept happening. I’m like, like, duh. Like I was, I was so right. It’s so obvious. I was really proud of myself. I’m, I’m bragging. I’m like, Alan, I totally figured out who it was in the first 20 minutes, and then I’m reading the trivia on I M D B and that’s one of the things like, yeah, everybody figured it out.

Todd: Right? You get really proud in early on you think, oh, that’s great. And then you hear all these like extra quips and ex extra like comments and things that he makes. So then you’re like, yeah, well, I mean, you kind of have to be dumb by top tip. Figured it out even if you didn’t catch it early on. Right. 

Craig: Oh God.

I mean, even if you just got a plot outline of this movie, I think that when this character is introduced, you’d be like, oh, it’s them. Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty clunky. But the i, the setup of the movie, ultimately it is, A jigsaw copycat. Yeah. And so you do get those elements. I mean, that’s one of the very first things, the very first things, uh, it opens up in like a fair and, uh, a woman gets her purse stolen and a man starts chasing after the thief and, and chases him down, I think into the subway tunnels or something, and then gets knocked out by somebody wearing a pig’s head, which, you know, comes from the series or whatever.

Mm-hmm. So you get these little, honestly, this movie felt like those direct to video hellrazor sequels that were never intended to be Hell Razer movies, but they were just movies that they had, and they were like, uh, we can write in some sinna bytes. That’s what this felt like. Like, it just, it just felt like any serial killer movie.

Yes. Or, um, any episode of Criminal Minds. Yes. But make it saw. 

Todd: Well, this was my point that I, I was kind of trying to make at the very beginning is it’s just a police procedural movie. The only thing that connects it to the SAW franchise is these traps and the mention of that. It’s a copycat of the jigsaw killer, but there’s nothing else about it that echoes the Saw franchise.

Every serial killer has a motive, and this guy has a motive too. Right. So, I mean, that’s nothing unique. SA had this kind of like deep philosophy kind of about, you know, right. These, these traps and these ways to bring people in. But also, like, part of the thing is that these people have choices to make, like they can redeem themselves, right?

Well, 

Craig: supposedly these people could too. But you’re also right that, that the stakes seem lower. I mean, yeah. Uh, it’s hard to describe cuz it’s kind of like saw light, but in a way it also kind of hearkens back more to the first one, which makes sense because this guy is new at this, you know? Yeah. I guess Jigsaw.

Jigsaw worked on this for years and years and years. Like, he could set up whole booby trapped houses, right? That was a whole different thing, but I don’t know. But it is, it just seems like, you know, make it a serial killer. Give him a motive. The motive’s fine, whatever, but just make it saw and, and so they just steal things from those movies.

They steal the killer wearing the pig’s head in this case. It makes sense because it comes down, they’re dealing with cops and the killer doesn’t like cops, so, you know, he’s making fun. He’s, he’s mocking them by wearing pigs heads and leaving pig corpses around. There’s that. Um, he marks, uh, every crime scene with a spiral that is the spiral from Billy the puppet’s cheek.

So there’s that connection. Um, he leaves video messages where he says things for the victims, I wanna play a game. And then he explains the trap and what they have to do, and there are traps. Um, and then he communicates with the cops via video. And he also uses a little marionette puppet. Right? It’s not, it’s not Billy the Puppet, but it’s a little pig marionette that kind of looks like Billy.

And like, that, that wasn’t even written in the script. At some point somebody was like, nah, you know, uh, saw a puppet. We, we need a puppet. And they’re like, right. 

Todd: It’s like, it’s like, okay. It’s like what Bill obs Jr. Told us about when they filmed one of the children of the corn sequels and somebody Kingdom had said, you missed two elements.

They’re no children and there’s no corn. Add some more scenes and then we can, we can distribute it. Yeah. 

Craig: Put, put a puppet in it. Just, just put a puppet in. Right. And then so they did, and that’s fine. Whatever. Um, and what, so the first guy who gets set up in a trap, he gets strung up in a subway tunnel over the tracks with this contraption on his head that is a vice on his tongue.

And this video comes on and it’s, oh God, I don’t even remember what the, what does it look like? Is it the pig head guy? What is the 

Todd: uh, the thing that talks to him is, um, oh God, I don’t remember either. All I remember is the voice is like, the saw voice was creepy. This is like a soft spoken, the opposite of the saw voice.

I wondered 

Craig: if it was a woman. I mean, it’s still manipulated, like it still sounds. Somehow altered, like it’s speaking through some kind of filter or something. Yeah. But yeah, it, it sounds very different, which they intended, they wanted it to sound different and they tried a bunch of different things.

Initially they had the idea that it would be like a child’s voice, and then they thought that sounded stupid. And then they tried to alter the actor who plays the actual killer. They tried to alter his voice and that didn’t work. And I, so. They ended up with what they ended up with. It sounds different.

Hello, detective Boswick. I want to play a game. The three train is arriving in two minutes. It is up to you to decide if this will be your final stop. You have taken the witness stand many times and railroaded innocent people with your lies, putting them away in jail today. It is you who will be railroaded.

You have one chance to live. Tear from your mouth, the tongue that has so often been used to lie and to deceive. Take a leap of faith and you will live. Only your weight will rip away your lying tongue and save you live or die. 

Todd: Make 

Craig: your choice, but he doesn’t. At least not in time. Um, that’s another thing.

The these traps, this killer must have been impatient because whereas in saw sometimes they had to agonize for a really long time. No, these folks have like 30 seconds. Like yeah, decide. Decide up to you’re dead. 

Todd: I mean, honestly, this kind of bothered me a little bit. I look, I’m not going to software believability, but Right.

So many of these setups like, come on, please. No, this isn’t gonna happen. Like there’s a subway train that’s gonna be coming by in two minutes. This guy just kind of woke up on his own and, right, right. Then this thing came on. Perfect timing. Yeah. This hap, I think almost every trap is like this, where they kind of wake up on their own.

They got the perfect timing for the killer. None of these things are actually clever. Like this is why I like the Saul movies is cuz these traps had these kind of clever, almost ironic, I don’t know. Like here in a way. Yeah. All right. So he lied on the stand and we’re gonna rip your tongue ass so you can’t talk anymore.

There’s a, a bit, a hint of irony there. It just didn’t go far enough. It wasn’t clever enough like most of 

Craig: the other songs. Yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s not, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is. Well, the whole movie opens up. We skipped this, it opens up, it seems like Chris Rock is a, a robber and it’s, he’s like, he robs this drug dealer or something, and it turns out it was a sting and his cover got blown or whatever.

Anyway, he gets sent out. Uh, on this guy who got hit by the subway train and realizes it’s not a homeless guy as they had expected, they don’t figure out who it is right there, right? But then they go back to the precinct and a box is delivered. There’s this whole like, valentine, what’s, what’s, uh, my bloody valentine.

There’s a whole my bloody Valentine thing too. 

Todd: It’s like my bloody Valentine’s 

Craig: where a, a box gets delivered with a bloody flash drive, I think. And he puts it in and there’s a message that’s like, one of your men wouldn’t redeem himself and he’s not gonna be the last one. And it shows this spiral and Chris rock’s.

Like, I know that building. That’s the courthouse. And it’s, that’s another thing that’s hilarious to me. Like every time they see one of these locations, somebody’s like, I know where that is. 

Todd: One. One of the locations is, it’s two 

Craig: blocks away from here. It’s an underpass. Right? 

Todd: Okay. Well, shouldn’t everybody know where that is then?

I mean, if it’s two freaking blocks away from your station, this is how silly it gets. Well, he goes out to investigate this, but not before he gets assigned a new partner, which is the most. Stereotypical cliche thing you could possibly do in a cop 

Craig: movie. Well, and he, even Chris Rock even kind of calls it ow.

He’s got a whole shtick about not wanting a partner, not needing a partner. And this guy who plays his partner, max Menella, hi. In the, in the movie, his name is, uh, William Shank, but Max Menella, he’s this young, good looking actor. He’s been around for a while. Um, I’ve seen him in several things. The thing that I recognized him most from is he is a, a, a main character on The Handmaid’s Tale.

Uh Oh yeah. Yeah. And has been from the beginning, like they’re in their like fourth or fifth season or something and he’s been a central character throughout and he’s good. I like this actor. But you’re right, it’s so stereotypical and stupid. Like he’s the rookie that gets thrown in with the down on his luck cop that nobody likes, and he’s a big grouch and.

It’s also stupid. I know. It’s so cliche. And, uh, Chris Rock’s basically just dragging this kid around. He has nothing to do. They go on this first thing together, the clue leads them into the courthouse. They go to the courthouse and they’re, they find another box, and inside that box is a tongue and the badge.

And from the badge they get the badge number, which leads them to the cop that it was, it turns out it was one of Chris Rock’s friends, like, so he has to go and like comfort the cop’s widow, which I thought surely would result in something, but no, it’s just an extra five minutes of the movie. It’s so frustrating.

That’s the really, the rest of the movie is just this investigation, but cops keep getting killed in these traps. But really there’s only a 

Todd: couple more, right? Yeah. The, the next guy is this guy Fitch. He’s the guy who ignored, uh, his backup call Chris, the banks’ backup call earlier, which was so dumb. Like, really these cops on a stakeout.

Are literally just gonna, one of them calls were back up and they’re just gonna chuckle and smoke cigars in their car while the other one possibly gets murdered. Like, 

Craig: it really was stupid. It was especially stupid because then when they hear the gunshots, like they’re super concerned, like, oh shit. Oh shit, they’re really, what’s gonna happen?

Like, did you think it was just around like, it’s so stupid. 

Todd: It’s really dumb. So that’s the flashback. Anyway, he gets abducted and he’s put in this, uh, trap where there’s this device that he’s like sitting in water and his fingers are gonna get ripped off or he’s gonna get electrocuted. Both end up happening.

So again, it’s this 

Craig: one especially, there wasn’t even enough time for the trap to work, like he was strung up. Um, and his fingers were in like, what looked like those like Chinese finger traps that we used to play with your kids, kind of and on wires. And they were getting pulled and eventually it got pulled like under a bar.

So his arms got stuck. He couldn’t go forward anymore and it was pulling his fingers off. But he was doing it like, yeah, he, he had to control it. He had to like bite down on something to make it go, and he was doing it like he paused for a second, but then he, he kept going and it was happening, and he got electrocuted anyway, so like, he, he didn’t have a chance.

Yeah. It was really a, it was a stupid ruse because even if he had bitten down as soon as he was told to and held it down the whole time, it wouldn’t have worked. He may have gotten all his fingers ripped off, but he certainly wouldn’t have had time to get outta that tub. 

Todd: Right. Well, maybe this was the.

The killer’s a rookie. I guess he didn’t, yeah, he didn’t, he didn’t calibrate things properly or something. But this is one of those cases where we see him in the trap. We hear the thing and then it cuts away. It’s like Maddeningly. Yes. 

Craig: This one. It cuts away. It does on this one, this one is bad because you do, you, you know, he’s dead before you actually see him get killed.

I don’t think that happens in the other ones. Um, but it does happen in this one. And I didn’t understand why they did it. Yes. It, it didn’t make sense. 

Todd: Well, for this director who has done, like others saw movies, this is totally against the whole formula. Like you wanna know if this guy’s gonna do it. You don’t start the trap and then cut away and show that he’s already dead.

And then later in some clunky flashback sequence showed what happened by then. We don’t care. We know. Oh, okay. Right. He, his fingers got ripped off and he got electrocuted, like boring. Right. But this was apparently one of the scenes where they had to trim. Because he said the director said, boy. And in the original scene as we did it, you saw every single finger pop and all this stuff and whatnot.

And I was thin here thinking like, after I read that, like I don’t even care cuz I didn’t need to see any of it. Cuz I already knew he was dead. There’s no tension. Why? You know? Yeah. What’s the 

Craig: point? Yeah, it was, it was really clunky. Uh, in the editing there, I just, I don’t get it. And uh, God. Oh, the 

Todd: next thing is really stupid though.

They begin to think that banks is responsible because he hated Finch. 

Craig: Uh, banks. Banks is Chris Rock. 

Todd: Okay. Right. Hey Chris Rock. Right. So then a box comes to the station and it’s got a pig puppet in it. And. It has a piece of his partner’s skin. Yeah. Skin’s. Skin. Skin. And when he flips it over, there’s tattoo on it.

Now his partner just hasn’t been around, I guess. Like I 

Craig: kind, he’s always been there. Like he’s been around. He just doesn’t do anything. Yeah. And the, it’s got, uh, a tattoo, Charlie, and, and they, they had made a whole big thing about how the new partner, God, what is his name? Shank. Shank. Oh, shank. You know, the first time they get into the car together, shank gets a, a picture of his family.

And it’s him and his wife and a kid, and he like puts it up in the visor. Like he just wants to have a picture of his family there. Okay, that makes sense. I assumed at that point, well, they’re setting it up for high stakes. Yeah. Because he’s got a, a wife and a baby at home and so he’s probably gonna be in peril or, or something.

And, and they talked about it again later. There’s a scene where, Shank calls him for some reason and the baby is crying and shanks like, oh yeah, I know it sounds terrible, but you know, we’re sleep training. He’ll cry himself to sleep or whatever. Oh yeah, yeah. But that’s it. Like he, otherwise he’s just kind of hanging around or, or not 

Todd: there at all.

Yeah, 

Craig: we’re not there at all. And then at this point, he gets the skin that says Charlie on it, and they get led by a clue to a butcher store that used to be like a hobby shop that Chris Rock’s dad took him to when he was a kid. Like, look, all of it is, 

Todd: this is the most convoluted bullshit you’ve 

Craig: ever seen in his life.

It is like it really is. 

Todd: He peels up the head of the doll and finds this little vial of paint with the name of the hobby shop, which. I really have a hard time believing that the killer would’ve known this little detail. Anyway, it’s so ridiculously it doesn’t really make sense. It doesn’t 

Craig: make sense, right?

It is. And and so it leads them to that place, and they find a skinned body, and they’re like, sometime around this time they start doing these weird shots of like Chris Rock, just screaming like it, it’ll just, it’ll just be a, a shot of his regular face and then it will. And then it’ll just be like a different cut of him, like screaming maniacally.

It’s trying 

Todd: to be like a nine inch nails video, but just 

Craig: kind of out of the blue, like he’s screaming in his head, but we can see it. It’s really weird. This is also the point where I had already figured it out, but at this point there’s just absolutely, it is so blatantly obvious Yeah. That the partner is the killer.

Yes. And this isn’t even the, the reason that it’s so blatantly obvious here is because they have made, like the deaths of the cops are the money shots of the movie. Yeah. Like the, the traps. Are the money shots. Yeah. And they don’t show us this guy get killed. They just show his skin and then they show this skinned body.

I’m like, 

Todd: they don’t even show this guy. Get ab supposedly abducted. You know, there’s 

Craig: nothing. It’s just like, if you don’t see them get killed on screen, they are not dead. Like that is just a rule. Mm. But the, the first time that I knew it was him when I was like, oh, it’s him was, they were sitting here on a table, like looking at evidence or, or clues or something, and the partner was like, Oh, I need to make a call.

Oh crap, my phone’s dead. Give me your phone. And Chris Rock like, makes a joke, but he hands him his phone and the guy walks out of the room with his phone. I’m like, oh, it’s him. Yeah. He totally did it there, there there’s no reason that he needed to take his phone and take it out of the room unless he was doing something shady.

I knew it from that point. Yeah. That it was him. And then, because I knew that it was him, when he made that call and the baby was crying in the background, I was like, there’s no baby I, unless I see a baby, there is no baby. And I’m telling my, in my head, I’m like, these are the things that are gonna pop up in that montage at the end to explain everything.

And they are, 

Todd: yes, yes, you were absolutely right. There was also a moment. When he said, oh, I’ve waited 12 years for this. And I was like, yes. Yeah, okay. I’ve waited 

Craig: 12 years for this. And there’s another moment where he said, said something about, oh yeah, your dad, uh, he’s, he’s the whole reason I’m doing this.

And I knew it. I’m like, wait a minute. What’s it was? So that’s way too obvious. So obvious. I didn’t even, like, I knew it was him. I didn’t know what his motive was. And I don’t know, it’s not too hard to figure out. He keeps killing all these corrupt cops. Yeah. So there’s obviously something going on there.

Ultimately it makes sense. But, uh, real quick, the last person to get killed is the hot captain. Which I didn’t see coming. Hey. And she gets water boarded with hot wax and uh, 

Todd: this trap didn’t even make sense to me. So she gets water boarded with hot wax and, but she has to sever her spinal cord on a blade to stop it from flowing from a pipe onto her face.

So I didn’t understand that either. And usually these traps, there’s like a mechanical thing, right? You gotta do this thing, which is gonna pull this lever or gonna yank this cord or gonna cut this thing or whatever. And that’s gonna stop the trap. I could not see how physically her. You know, backing her neck over this blade was gonna do anything to stop the wax and it shows you close up the trap, the blade, her neck, all that stuff.

I don’t know, at this point I was also thinking, I was sort of thinking it was like a, I don’t remember if it was a second one or the third one where, again, spoiler alert, but part of the plot is that the traps are not actually meant to be, they’re rigged so that even if you do the thing they say, you’re still gonna die.

Mm-hmm. I, I even felt like, oh, well maybe this is one of those cases because the couple, the last three traps that we’ve seen in this movie, I couldn’t think that, you know, like you just said, there’s no time. It just didn’t seem to work. You know, I thought maybe that was a thing. It’s not. But, uh, that’s how bad these are.

Uh, it. It’s just so not in keeping with the soft franchise, that it’s just mind blowing that the same people participated in it. Mm-hmm. Anyway. 

Craig: Yeah. Well, I mean, and that it’s gross. It’s gross to watch her get water boarded with rock wax and then to see Chris Rock run in, um, they know that she’s in trouble.

Like he got sent kind of on a wild goose chase and he figures out that he had gotten sent on a wild goose chase. And so they know that she’s in trouble and are not in a big hurry. Like that drove me crazy. Yeah. Like he and some other chicky cop were like upstairs and they realized that she’s just in the basement, in the precinct, and so they just kind of jogged down there.

Like they don’t seem to be, I, I really thought if they had just picked up the pace a little bit, they might have saved her, but, um Right, right. Yeah. But, uh, instead he just goes down there and peels the wax off and takes off part of her face with it, which looked really gross. But yeah, it was, uh, I just, I don’t know.

Todd: So then, He gets another lead. Right. I can’t remember what it is. Well, his dad has been 

Craig: missing this whole time, like Right. They were, they were, they, you know, we’ve, we’ve, we established that they have a strained relationship. Um, we see more of that in the flashbacks. Like, I think his dad’s pissed off at him for turning in a corrupt cop without consulting him first or something.

And then his dad has just been missing this whole time. Yeah. And he gets some sort of clue. I don’t know. I hardly took any, uh, any notes here. But we see, okay. 

Todd: He gets captured. He wakes up at a warehouse and he’s handcuffed to a pipe, just like the first movie, and there’s a hacksaw. And so he goes and he grabs it and he, you know, starts to try to hack, saw through his, uh, his, his cuffs.

Caesar is not gonna work, and we’re all thinking the same thing. Yeah. But then he, he sees a bobby pin a little ways away as well, so he, he just kinda like uses the saw to pull it towards him. So that he could pick the lock. And I was like, is this supposed to be funny? Is this like a joke for us? Or like a nod to, I think it was the previous movie because it just, it’s just kind of thrown in there.

Yeah. Think it was, doesn’t really play like, uh, okay. All right. So I think I 

Craig: read somewhere even that, uh, one of the things that Chris Rock was thinking about when he was thinking, what would it be like he was trying to picture himself in that position, like a movie where I, Chris Rock, am chained to a, with a, with a hacks on what does that look like?

Um, but he finds a bobby pin. Sure. I I, I don’t know if that was some kind of test, you know, like Right. Like why would that be if he’s clever enough, if he looks closely enough, he’ll find this bobby pin and he’ll be able to get out, whatever. Uh, yeah. And so he gets himself out and then he finds. His ex-partner who he’s talked to since, oh, like there was a whole, there was a whole scene where he went back and talked to his ex-partner, the one that he had turned in.

It was 

Todd: like a counselor or 

Craig: something for, yeah, he’s rehabilitated himself. He like runs an AA group or something. He’s still bitter. 

Todd: Oh, by the way, he talks about. Article eight. There’s this mention, I think he’s the first person who mentions Article eight. Yeah, article eight, blah blah, blah, you know? Yeah.

You Dylan started that. Yeah. We were working under Article A and well, we, back then we were working under Article eight, so a lot of bad shit went down. I don’t think by the end of the movie, any of us ever know what Article eight was. I couldn’t remember if it 

Craig: was a real thing. I don’t think. No, no. I was think, I was thinking, I don’t even know where this takes place.

Do they ever make mention of, I mean, it’s just urban, like, I don’t know. Yeah, 

Todd: I don’t think it 

Craig: was a particular type. I was thinking like, you know, corrupt cops and stuff. I was thinking, uh, like stop and frisk and stuff, but I think that this is just, um, I don’t know, whatever. This is a stand-in thing. Yeah.

Yeah. He, uh, he mentions it and then, uh, he tries to get this guy down. I didn’t even understand what this was like. He’s set up in front of some thing where there’s a convey, 

Todd: no, I knew what this was. What is it? Because I was on the city council, we used to have one of these, it was a glass crushing machine.

You know what, like recycling glass and things like that. You grind the glass down into tiny little pieces that you can use it like in gravel and like to kind of as a bed for roads and stuff. Why 

Craig: does it shoot shards of glass out like a cannon? That just doesn’t seem, why is it all, 

Todd: I guess it had been like, you know, modified or something, or something put behind.

Craig: Yeah. I, I couldn’t see a logical, like, I could understand the grinding process, but like, just dump the shards onto the ground. Don’t project them out of a giant cannon. Yeah, 

Todd: it was, it didn’t even make sense in the movie because in the movie, like when you see there’s like a, there’s like a conveyor belt that’s continuously going of bottles that are set up, you know, that drop into this thing and that shoot out at him.

Yet when, when you see like it in practice it’s like it shoots a bunch and then stops, and then shoots a bunch and then stops and then shoots a bunch. It’s like, it’s almost like there’s a rhythm to it. But actually like visually you can see there’s. There’s not a gap between the bottles, it’s just a bunch of bottles.

So I didn’t get this at all. Uh, it was dumb. Yeah, 

Craig: whatever. It doesn’t matter. He like, I think he figures out how to get him down, but it’s too late. And then another door opens and he walks in there and his dad has strung up like a marionette. And I don’t understand this either. Like, no, he, he’s, he, he’s got like spikes through him or something that are draining blood into all these jars all around.

Now this, it does look like a saw trap. Um, and the way it’s lit and the way that it’s constructed, it’s very spooky and it looks very much like a, I don’t know what I’m trying to get at. Like, it, it lives up to the franchise. It looks really good. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s needles in his arm and at the end of each needle it’s, you know, it’s like the needle.

You might get to draw blood at the Red Cross or something. It goes into tubes, but instead of the tubes leading to a blood bag, it just, it just goes down. So it’s like one in each arm and one in each leg. And it goes down to a, a jar down below where it’s dripping the blood. And you can see that these jars are at least halfway full of blood.

Craig: Yeah. Which is dumb. Oh, so what’s his name reveals himself. Um, s Shank reveals himself. He’s not really dead, which you could see coming 10 miles away. But he explains himself. Turns out he was that kid. He was the kid of the guy who got shot. Now, when you were explaining that flashback, I think that we see that flashback like two or three times.

Mm-hmm. But every time we see it, we get more information. I don’t think we get. That the kid was a witness to that until now. We’ve seen the guy get shot at least twice, but I think this is the first time that we see that a kid was right behind him watching and that Chris Rock acknowledged that. Well, anyway, shank is that kid.

He’s been planning this forever. And what his end game is, is he wants Chris Rock to be his partner and uh, Chris Rock will be the inside guy and they’ll get the dirty on dirty cops and kill them. And, and Chris Rock is like, what? 

Todd: You want me to kill cops? He’s like, no, just the dirty ones. Just no, just the bad 

Craig: ones.

Um, okay. And, but he’s gotta like, make a decision. Like he can either shoot the partner Shank or he’s only got one bullet in his gun. He can shoot Shank or he can shoot this target, which will drop his dad and, and save 

Todd: his hat. All right. Let me, let me just talk about how dumb this is. First of all, why would he not save his dad?

Of course, he would save his dad. He’s not gonna shoot this partner and let his dad die, okay? Unless he’s afraid the partner’s gonna do something. But the partner said, oh, yeah, you got this choice. I’m gonna let you make a choice. So, you know, in keeping with the saw, he’s got a choice. All right. Number two, he shoots, he shoots that target, which drops his dad to the ground, which then he runs up to him.

Uh, by the way, by the way, oh, you forgot to mention that. Cops. Yeah. This guy calls the cops. He says, oh, there’s a, there’s a crazy guy. He calls the cops on the phone. He says, nine one one. There’s this crazy guy over at the warehouse. He’s shooting people. He shoots like a, a few bullets off of his gut, so they come down here quick.

All right. Now the SWAT team’s on their way. Really, 

Craig: we have exactly four minutes in 

Todd: exactly four minutes. You know this and you’ve timed all this Uhhuh. He, he also says, oh, do you know that the human body has 1.5 gallons of blood in there? Your dad’s not gonna last very long. He’s like, the SWAT team might get here, but not in time to save your dad.

Really? How did you time all this out so perfectly, right? Uhhuh, that your dad would be drained of just enough blood and then you call the SWAT team, you have no when they’re going to arrive, so I’m sure he, he’s got some leeway here. It would probably o be okay. Number two, you could just go up to your dad hanging there from a marionette and pull all of those tubes out of his arms and legs, which are hanging right there within arm’s reach, if that is all that is required to save your dad, right?

Which that is sort of what the movie implies. This dad falls to the ground, he pulls out. We only see him pull one out, but I guess we assume he pulls all of the rest of them out as well. And that’s supposed to stop the bleeding. No, his dad, you would need to like put some pressure on all of those wounds to stop the blood from Floyd.

Like none of this shit makes sense. So that was irritating. Or 

Craig: shoot the bad guy and then throw the gun at the target. Like Yeah, surely, surely there’s something else you could get that target with. There’s, oh, that’s the stupidest thing. It is silly. And then so like he shoots the target, the dad falls down, then he, I guess, is trying to get shank.

Meanwhile the cops are cutting through this heavy steel door and when they cut through it, they also cut through a trip wire that pulls the dad back up and magically from somewhere. A rifle appears in his arm, and as the police come in, the marionette machine pulls up the dad’s arm. So it looks like he’s pointing a shotgun at the police.

And the police shoot him a bazillion times. And we, while this is happening, we see Shank in an elevator in the background, and Chris Rock is looking at his ad, and then he turns and looks over his shoulder and sees the elevator door closing on Shank. And he goes, no.

And that’s the end of the movie.

Todd: And Shank does the same sh, you know, motion that Chris Rock and the flashback did to him as a kid. Right, right. To keep him hidden, which. Also doesn’t make logical sense. Like that’s supposed to be ironic except like Chris Rock was actually helping the kid at that moment. Like Chris Rock was helping the kid, helping his dad.

Why in the world sh wouldn’t somebody have kept track of this kid? Like none of that shit makes sense. Right? If there was a kid at the scene of the crime or the kid who was right, none of that. Okay. So anyway, let. All that. Everything else is just 

Craig: silly. It is, it’s really stupid. We, we forgot to mention too, that the, that, um, shank, the, the villain is mad at Samuel L.

Jackson because he ran the, like he was captain of the police force and was very much aware of the corruption and supported it and hid it and all that kind of stuff. So he was corrupt too. We, we left that part out, but, um, I don’t know. Ultimately it was just really stupid. It is so dumb. 

Todd: I, 

Craig: but I think the reason, I think that’s why I liked it, I think because it was so stupid.

I was really amused. I was really amused by it. Oh, 

Todd: I was flabbergasted at the movie. So I, I would say my first time through, I just could not believe how bad it was. So in that, in that sense, yeah, it was pretty amused. I just couldn’t believe that this thing got released as it was. I honestly cannot remember the last mainstream.

Hollywood movie, let alone with big stars in it that I’ve ever seen where I just was everyone out to lunch. What was going on here? I mean, I’ve seen some stupid movies, but I have always figured, well, I could see where they thought this was gonna work. It just didn’t play. Yeah. They’re movies that just don’t work.

You know? Cutthroat Island didn’t work, but yeah. You know, you wouldn’t not necessarily watch that and pinpoint this and be like, this is like really fucking stupid. This is ridiculous. This is like, you know, like, but this movie has got all of that, like just the first cut of this should have just set huge alarm bells.

Like, we can’t release this. And they did, and, and let alone, oh, it’s just a van. It must have just been a vanity project for Chris Rock. And nobody had the guts to, you know, say, oh, I guess, dude, I guess you can’t act. And all, all this is really dumb and con of eluded. I, I appreciate what he was trying to do.

I actually really like, you know, kind of on the, kind of, in the sort of tales from the hood arena. I like the idea of taking this sort of very modern problem that we have of corrupt police and, and kind of shining some light on it. I think the irony of his father raising the gun at them and them shooting without just because, you know, they felt threatened and all that.

I mean, I think, I think the idea of it as, as pitched would be great, but the execution just, 

Craig: yeah, I, I, I agree with you for it. Just, it really doesn’t work. I, I do, again, wanna say I really am a big fan of Chris Rock. I think he’s hilarious and he’s funny in this movie. It’s just like, why I, I, I almost feel kinda like he was going for a lethal weapon vibe.

Like, this is a serious cop movie, but we’re funny. Uh, and I don’t it times think, I don’t think other people got the memo. Like he’s, he’s in that, he’s in that movie by himself and everybody else is trying to make an episode of Criminal Minds. And, 

Todd: uh, Chris Rock and the director kept going back and forth and their whole like, sort of, Catchphrase.

What’s it? This is, this was seven mixed with 48 

Craig: hours. Okay. Right. And I can see that. I can see, you know, the Eddie Murphy vibe. I get it. It doesn’t work. 

Todd: No, this didn’t work. The bottom line. Well, they’re gonna be making a, a, a tent saw movie. Yeah. I, 

Craig: I lost track, so I have no idea. I don’t even know which ones I’ve seen and which ones I haven’t.

It’s 

Todd: still gonna happen even though this one was not critically received Well, I don’t know if it’s necessarily gonna have Chris Rock and it probably 

Craig: won’t. No, no. This I think was standalone. Um, in fact, I read that the, the director and the guy, uh, max Menella, who played Shank, they talked about potential stories that could continue this, but I don’t think that a sequel was ever really in consideration.

And we, I think we’ve seen the last of Chris Rock in this, in this world. 

Todd: I feel so bad. Oh, poor guy. 

Craig: He can go cry into his mountains of money. He’s fine. 

Todd: He okay. You still made money from this. Who cares, right? Yeah. I wish my failures could be so successful 

Craig: and whatever, you know, like he loved these movies and he wanted to be one and he had the whatever, the gra toss to make that happen.

Whatever. Good for you. Yeah. Hope he had fun. 

Todd: Yeah. I mean, look, to be fair, it has gotta be pretty easy when you’re ha actor to make things like this happen. Who knows? But good for him. Yeah, good for him. Will, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share this with a friend.

Let us know what you thought of this movie and this episode by finding us online. Just Google two Guys on Chainsaw podcast and you can find our Facebook page, our Twitter feed, Instagram, just to leave us a message anywhere there. And please share this with a friend. And if you are so motivated and enjoy this show, please write a review on any one of the platforms that you listen to, podcasts, uh, that is the one of the best ways you can support us.

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Until next time. I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw