Why this one?
Well, it stars recently minted Oscar winner Mikey Madison, so it's got to be at least half decent, right?
Reading the synopsis, I'm not so sure.
"Young single mother River (Mikey Madison) is coerced against her will to become an informant for the police against Silas (G-Eazy), an infamous drug lord and father of her child. After an undercover operation goes wrong, River soon finds herself fighting for her life and on the run to protect her daughter."
I mean, it could be good, but probably not.
But this synopsis gets at the larger issue with this movie, the one the other half of the above banner reveals:
Look, I'm not into judging books by their covers, but there's a reason this exists as an aphorism. We all do it, and when the cover shows me "Gerald 'G-Eazy' Gillum" as a co-star, I go straight into judging mode.
This is not a universal indictment of rappers as actors, either. Some rappers are great actors, have even become beloved icons specifically for their acting. But, not "Gerald 'G-Eazy' Gillum."
The thing I really want to tell you about was how buried this movie was until Madison won her Oscar.
Checking it out on IMDB, I noticed it's not even a 2024 release -- it's a 2023 release. That's right, it hit the internet in Canada and the U.S. on December 8, 2023. At which point it earned a 4.9 from the collective raters on IMDB, who often tend to be generous with their ratings unless they are ganging up to troll a movie whose subject matter they find too progressive. (A rant for another time.)
The movie trickled out with a theatrical release in the United Arab Emirates (!) on March 27, 2024, and a random Swedish internet release date of April 28th of this year. (It's possible there were other releases along the way, though IMDB did not capture them.)
Now finally it's seeing the light of day in August in the Australia/New Zealand market.
And I will not, in fact, be reviewing it.
It isn't a bad idea to try to capitalize on Madison's sudden marketability. I mean, my own curiosity was piqued, almost to the point of emailing the guy that I would do it, before cooler heads prevailed.
But it does indicate to us how recently Madison was making movies like All Souls, and how, if not for Anora, she might have been back to that sort of movie again right away.
Speaking of judging, though, I should say that everyone has to start out somewhere. It's the very rare case of an actor who starts appearing in prestige projects right from the beginning. If your first role is as an adult, it's pretty unlikely, as only child actors graduate to prestige movies when they come of age, and only if they were successful child actors. At which point they are known names anyway, and part of the film's marketing campaign.
Actually, this does describe Madison to some degree. Her first credit was in 2013, when she was only 14. She appeared in a couple shorts, then a couple features, then a TV show, and then a Quentin Tarantino movie (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and a horror reboot (Scream). So she was already on her way, but she still hadn't broken out, so she thought All Souls seemed like a good idea. (Maybe it was. I haven't seen it.)
However, I also have to wonder if the marketing of the movie has been shifted to make it seem more about her than it really is. The only real evidence I have of this is that in the cast listing on IMDB, Madison's is the 11th listed name. That could be random -- I've seen situations where the well-known star of a movie has their name buried in the IMDB credit, which I know are sometimes entered as they appear in the movie, which could be in order of their appearance on screen. G-Eazy is only fifth listed, so maybe it isn't actually that much about him either. But it could also be a total bait and switch, where Madison isn't really in the movie that much but her name value now gives the movie a second life it never expected to have.
I'm almost curious enough to see it.
But, nah.
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