Film Review: The Misfits Dir: Renny Harlin

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The Misfits is a soulless, 94-minute advertisement posing as a generic heist film, stuffed with clichés, weak dialogue, and hollow, mass-produced style that abandons qualitative substance to achieve nothing more than a glossy, propaganda-laden show-reel for its B-grade actors.

Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Rami Jaber, Hermoine Corfield, Tim Roth

The MisfitsJust as my mind was piecing itself together after the mind-numbing horror show of Cosmic Sin, along comes The Misfits to drive another nail into the coffin of 2021’s cinematic offerings. So buckle up, because this cash-grab car crash is about to hurtle into cinemas and I’m questioning whether we are, in fact, living in the darkest timeline.

The Misfits begins with an endlessly exhausting voice-over from Ringo (Nick Cannon) accompanying grainy old-timey footage and a story about bank robberies, which somehow feels completely vapid and empty despite being filled with snappy, zingy commentary about The Beatles and his confidence in knowing safety deposit boxes aren’t insured.

This voice-over continues, on and off, for the next 90 or so minutes, which I can only assume was a decision at the end of production when someone said, “Yes, very pretty, but none of this makes any sense and it’s ridiculously illogical. What if we had a voice-over to just sort of, distract, and gloss over these absurd plot holes and conveniences?” and just becomes a reminder that whenever Cannon speaks, it’s only an opportunity to take in the flimsiest of expository moments or to apologise to whoever you took along to this film.

The MisfitsRingo then introduces the rest of The Misfits and its extended cast; Wick (Mike Angelo) a demolitions expert who spends his time flicking his hair and blows up one thing in the entire film, Violet (Jamie Chung), a near-superhuman martial arts expert who is only a master of verbal jiu-jitsu and fights once with the assistance of 1,000 jump-cuts and you-go-girl one-liners, and The Prince (Rami Jaber), an international genius conman with delivery and mannerisms as smooth as sandpaper wrapped in all the charisma and charm of an oil spill.

We also meet Richard Pace (Pierce Brosnan), another alleged master escape artist and conman who we discover just escaped from a prison owned by the detestably greedy Schultz (Tim Roth). See, Pace slept with Schultz’s wife some time ago and, because apparently the culmination of a man’s ego is removing a woman’s agency and making her his property, Schultz never moved on and has been trying to murder Pace ever since, something he never really hides from the F.B.I. who he also works alongside, somehow.

The Misfits

So Pace is duped into delivering his dullest and most obvious wallet-stealing con against The Prince, who reveals he’s actually had his eye on Pace for a job with The Misfits. One chase scene / tedious advert for a Porsche Spyder later, and we’re on the jet to fictional Jazeristan with The Misfits, who all tell Pace he’s a generally stupid, worthless human being who needs to start doing some good in his life or get thrown off a plane.

Thankfully, they’ve got just the job, and wow, it involves Schultz, who we learn not only spends his time aggressively building prisons just to house one man who slept with his wife, but is also apparently funding terrorism in The Middle East, financing the Muslim Brotherhood in Jazeristan (even though that’s in Egypt) with gold hidden inside one of his prisons because the film’s writers have all the originality of a photocopy.

And if this wasn’t ridiculous enough, it turns out that Pace’s extremely confident and stylish long-lost daughter, Hope (Hermione Corfield), is actually behind the whole thing. See, unlike her father, Hope is a humanitarian at heart, hoping to just cure the world one good deed at a time, so she decides she’ll put together the team to steal foreign gold and almost kill an entire prison population so she can anonymously donate the funds to UNICEF.

The Misfits

Every character in the film is arrogant, self-aggrandising, useless, self-righteous and completely void of relatable humanity, spouting off worthless, incendiary lines and forgettable platitudes. Let’s dive into a 20-minute snapshot of what I’ll graciously refer to as the film’s second act:

“Deep down under all that urbane panache and capricious thievery, you’re good.”
“It’s not about us. It’s about preventing that gold from financing terrorism.”
 “If I can’t be good to someone, I can at least try to be good to everyone.”
 “You’re a very attractive man. But I don’t date men. I kill them.”

 “Jazeristan is an important U.S. ally, CENTCOM uses Al Udeid Air Base to launch assaults in the Middle East. America doesn’t need to ask too many questions, Jazeristan doesn’t need to find any answers.”

What’s troubling here – other than this is the film that will be replaying on repeat forever when I’m sent to the abyss for my reviews – is that, while Jazeristan isn’t a real country,  Al Udeid Air Base is a real place. It’s one of two military bases in Doha, Qatar, and if your gold-plated spidey senses are tingling at why they chose to mix up fantasy and reality, you might find yourself wondering if this is one uncomfortably transparent propaganda film.

The MisfitsThe last thirty minutes of the film desperately tries to pull off the ultimate con; dialling up the comedy to absurdist levels and trying to pass itself off as a stylishly suave modern-day answer to Fast and The Furious and the Ocean’s films, wearing this borrowed suit with the same grimacing authenticity that Leatherface might convincingly wear someone else’s skin.

But not even a Benny Hill inspired hyper-speed mass-vomiting scene in prison or Mike Angelo pointlessly gyrating on a drill to BAD’s Refresher can distract from this absolute moronic lunacy, sloppily jamming bits of other films ungracefully into its shell of a story until your brain finally gives up and just accepts the inevitable end.

Deus ex machina is dished out PEZ-dispenser style, everyone finishes each other’s sentences and cheers their glasses on the beach to family, Jessie J predictably plays in the background and we’re told by a news report that all the gold has been donated to UNICEF for Zaatari, the largest Syrian refugee camp in Jordan.

So many questions, but just like the U.S. and Qajazaregyptstan, I’m not going to ask them, and the film will be all the happier for not having to find any answers. You know a film must be truly shocking if Rotten Tomatoes critics can’t be bought out but, regardless, I’m always one to try and find the gold buried deep beneath the clay and, if nothing else, I’ll say this is the best film you could take someone to this year if you want to end a friendship or legally torture them for 90 minutes.

Oxford Lamoureaux

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Oxford Lamoureaux
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