Key and Peele: Hillary Clinton Anger Translator

I don't watch a tremendous amount of television but I ran across this skit and thought it funny enough to share. I recognized Stephnie Weir from MADtv. I always thought she was a bit underrated there. Nice to see her here. I really like the whole Obama anger translator bit so it made sense to use it to parody Hillary Clinton. I think that like Obama or really most other politicians, Clinton keeps a lot of her true feelings very tightly wrapped. Key and Peele continue to impress. They, like Weir, are MADtv alumni and apparently reached out to Weir to do the translator bit.

De'Andre Johnson dismissed from FSU football team

Some people like to say that there is no excuse for violence against women. I don't really like that framing at all because it turns what could be a valid reason into an "excuse" and ignores the fact that whether we like it or not there are some very violent, dangerous and even deadly women on this planet. What IS true however is that almost regardless of what a particular woman might have done to initiate or continue a physical confrontation, a man who hits a woman rightfully has a very high bar of skepticism and contempt to climb over in a court of law or especially the court of public opinion. Because this is the case it is a good idea to avoid putting hands on women. It's a bad idea and is often morally repugnant. However, men, like women, do have the right and duty to defend themselves. There ought to be a better way for us to distinguish the case of a man who is legitimately defending himself from the case of a lowlife punk who just gets his kicks beating and terrorizing those who are weaker than he. I've seen both situations. This problem is further muddled by the assumption that women are and should be in all ways "equal" to men. Some people say that if we wouldn't worry about a bad outcome happening to a man because of his or someone else's dumb decision than we shouldn't worry about a woman in the same position. So by this logic if a woman wants to be in combat and is qualified, let her do it. There should be no cries of "Save the women and children!" if a ship starts to sink. We're all equal. Well.
De'Andre Johnson, former quarterback for the Florida State Seminoles football team, found out the hard way that "defending yourself" from a woman in the same way that you might defend yourself from a man is not, at least for him, an acceptable course of action. He got into a physical confrontation with a woman at a Tallahassee bar. She raised her hands which were balled up in fists. They both appeared to push and grapple with each other. She took a swing at Johnson. Johnson punched back. The woman lost. It is the difference in gender and strength that makes this a shock. Johnson was suspended and later dismissed from the team.


Florida State Seminoles coach Jimbo Fisher dismissed freshman quarterback De'Andre Johnson from the team Monday night, hours after the state's attorney's office released video showing Johnson punching a woman in the face last month at a Tallahassee bar.

Fisher made the announcement in a brief statement released by FSU on Monday night.
Johnson, who was named Florida's "Mr. Football" as a senior at First Coast High School in Jacksonville, Florida, was indefinitely suspended from the team in June. He was charged with misdemeanor battery for striking the 21-year-old woman during an argument June 24. He surrendered to Tallahassee police on June 30 and was released on $500 bond.
The video, which was captured by security cameras in a bar near the FSU campus, shows Johnson trying to push past the woman, who was waiting to order at the bar. The woman turned toward Johnson, who grabbed her right arm after she raised it in a fist. The woman raised her knee and swung at Johnson with her left arm, and then he punched her in the face.
LINK

When I watched this I asked myself what was Johnson, who is under the legal drinking age, doing in a bar in the first place? But I was informed that some bars allow underage people to enter; they just won't serve them alcohol. Both Johnson and the woman made bad decisions. If I were the prosecutor I would charge both of them or charge neither of them. But I'm no lawyer. Perhaps someone with actual legal training and experience will chime in to discuss the charges. Bottom line though is that I think it's critically important that we teach all people regardless of their race or gender not to put hands on other people. If this were a smaller man who had started something with say, a heavyweight MMA or boxing champ before losing in a spectacular fashion, many more of us would likely find it humorous. We would tend to judge same gender interactions differently than we would opposite gender ones. Is that wrong? Perhaps. I think it's good and proper to teach men not to hit women. I also think it's good and proper to teach women not to hit men. No hands. Why is this so difficult? Did the woman think that Johnson was just to going to accept a punch in the face? Did Johnson think he was going to walk away with no repercussions? 

Book Reviews: Necessary Evil

Necessary Evil
by David A. Van Meter

This is a very creepy thriller/horror revenge story. It's told in first person so you never get the chance to step outside of the subject's mind. This was a short novel, just over 300 pages. It's an older book, written a little over twenty years ago. It was very graphic for the times, but still retains its ability to shock even in today's grindcore market. Revenge is not really a morally good feeling is it? We try to get rid of it by outsourcing private revenge to a dispassionate justice system. But for some crimes and for some people that's not enough. Some people are able to forgive the worst trespasses as indeed Christianity argues that they should. Vengeance is not man's but God's. Other people scoff at such arguments. If someone hurts them or gives them trouble they want to repay evil for evil, hurt for hurt, pain for pain to bitter end. For some people turning the other cheek only invites further attacks. And even if it didn't it would still be morally wrong to do so. You come after me with a bat; I get my gun. You put my brother in the hospital; I leave your son's casket on your front door. And so on. Most societies can not operate if everyone behaved in such a fashion because we'd live in a Hobbesian state of nature where no one can trust anyone who is stronger than they are. So in order to have the benefits of society we all implicitly agree to give up our private desires of revenge or retribution to accept the dictates of judges, juries and the law. But what if the law lets us down? Then what? Do we accept that sometimes a guilty person gets away with his or her crime? Or does that haunt us? In Necessary Evil, Van Meter shows almost in a clinical way how an act of evil impacts a child and warps him for life. If you have ever wondered where an adult psychopath came from, Necessary Evil gives a pretty good, though occasionally cliched, depiction of just how such a human being is created. The story jumps back and forward through time. We get childhood memories, teenage memories and finally present day descriptions from a thirty three year old man.

Billy McIlwaine is a thirty three year old man who has just been released from prison for a horrific crime which is not important to know about in this review. He's seemingly adjusted to being back in society. He has a job as a security guard and does his best to stay out of trouble. All the same though Billy is haunted by memories of a better time. Twenty three years prior when Billy was just ten he was forced to witness the murder of his maternal grandfather. In part Billy blames himself for his grandfather's murder. Not only did the lowlife perpetrators not go to jail they were able to claim self-defense and even successfully sued the estate. Billy's father Ned cared nothing for his father-in-law or wife and son. As soon as he learned there was no money forthcoming, he left. Even when he was around he wasn't much of a husband or father. He abused and cheated religiously on his wife, Billy's mother Grace. Grace is an alcoholic who has attempted suicide. Left to grow up with the clingy and oft inappropriate Grace (this is quite a Freudian story) Billy becomes alienated in some very real ways that go unnoticed. By the time Billy is a teen, Grace has turned her life around and become very financially successful in real estate. She doesn't have a lot of time left to tend to Billy. She has work to do. But Billy is obsessed with finding the two men who murdered his beloved grandfather.    

The book sort of dragged a bit in the middle. I did like the idea that people can often be in love with a false memory of a person or in love with who that person used to be and not realize that that person doesn't exist any longer. Our experiences define us and can also twist us. If evil is anything it's the inability to empathize, to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Over time, Billy gradually loses the ability to do this. As everything is told from Billy's POV, the story can get kind of claustrophobic at times. And because Billy is not always certain that what he's seeing is actually there, there are some deliberately unanswered questions. All in all this was an ok book. Not horrible, not the best. Evil can invoke pity at the same time as we know that we must remove the infected person from society, perhaps even from the planet.

Chris Christie is running for President: You gotta problem with that?

If it's Tuesday it must be time for another man or woman to announce that he or she is running for President. Today it was New Jersey governor Chris Christie. I think, similar to what happens after someone you know hits the lottery there's a feeling that if that person got lucky why not you. I think that after President Obama pulled off the longest of longshots by getting elected, not just once but twice, that a lot of would be candidates have reached the conclusion that if he can, they can. 

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) announced he's running for president in 2016. Christie told supporters of his plans in a phone call Tuesday morning, according to NBC and the AP. Christie made a public announcement Tuesday afternoon at Livingston High School, his alma mater, in Livingston, New Jersey. I am now ready to fight for the people of the United States of America," Christie said at the public announcement. He praised his home state during his speech, sharing how working as governor inspired him to run for president. Christie also took hits at lawmakers in Washington, including President Barack Obama, claiming a lack of productivity from Congress is giving Americans anxiety. "Both parties have failed our country... both parties have led us to believe that America, a country that was built on compromise -- that compromise is somehow a dirty word," Christie said. "We need to have the courage to choose, we need to have the courage to stand up and say 'enough,'" Christie added.

LINK

When I think of Governor Christie I think of aggression. To me that seems to be his defining characteristic. Some of that could just be my discomfort with his particular communication style, which is very stereotypically East Coast blunt. He reminds me of a few bosses or co-workers I had whom I did not like one bit. But then again what difference does it make if someone tells you that "Your idea stinks. Why are you even wasting my time with this bovine emission?" instead of telling you "Your idea needs a few tweaks. Let's discuss it later." Either way, someone is telling you that your idea is not what they needed. Christie strikes me as a man much more comfortable with the former phrasing. I tend to use the latter. Before the 2012 Presidential Election, people who were unhappy with what they saw as Romney's genteel style, tried to get Christie to run for President or get Romney to put Christie on the ticket as Vice-President. Christie's big draw would supposedly have been his pugnacious nature. Obviously neither event occurred and here we are. Christie has a few problems this time around. He may have missed his chance for the big time. There's the Bridgegate thingie. There's the fact that despite Christie's slow move to the right and his flip flops on social issues, I don't think too many Bible Belt Republican primary voters are thinking , Chris Christie, culture warrior. He's entering a very crowded field. He has low approval ratings in his home state. On the other hand Christie relishes attention and a good fight. Unlike Trump, Christie has actually won elected office. And doing so as a Republican in a reliably Democratic state shows that if nothing else, he's had good political instincts. 

I don't see Christie winning the nomination but there will be some fireworks between Christie and Paul, assuming both men make it to the televised debates. Christie has the confidence and deftness to make an appeal to moderates and independents should he somehow win the nomination. The question is how far right will he be willing to tack to appeal to the kinds of people who are calling for massive resistance to the Obergefell decision.

HBO Game of Thrones Season Five Differences/Analysis

*There will be some spoiler type material here below the fold. 
If you've read Mario Puzo's book The Godfather and watched Francis Ford Coppola's films The Godfather and The Godfather II, you will know Coppola excised many book plots from his film adaptation. Although I don't think Puzo was a horrible writer I do think that Coppola was a better filmmaker than Puzo was an author. The Godfather novel featured Puzo rambling on at length about Lucy Mancini's anatomical sexual abnormalities, the racist, familial and job related frustrations of NYPD police officer Albert Neri, Hollywood's poor treatment of writers and third tier talent, and the noble sacrifices of a friendly abortionist with the guts (however fleeting) to stand up to Michael Corleone. I thought that this was tedious reading and would have made for boring viewing. Coppola was right to drop it. There were other better written book subplots that weren't necessarily key to Coppola's story or were excessively detailed. Some of this material found its way into Godfather II, but some of it is unadapted, waiting for a Godfather IV film perhaps? I mention this because although I'm generally supportive of the author's original intent, I believe there are always things that simply don't translate well from text to screen. So I'm not a book purist or rather not only a book purist. When I read some books I hope that certain characters are massively redone or dropped from a possible film version. Just as I was relieved not to have to watch Lucy Mancini's gynecological melodrama in The Godfather, I thought that HBO's Game of Thrones was well served by (so far?) skipping or possibly rewriting Strong Belwas, a black obese eunuch former slave, who fights for Daenerys and often relieves his bowels upon or at those he defeats while speaking of himself in the third person (and often broken English). Yeah, no thanks on that one GRRM.

Season Five of HBO's Game of Thrones took several steps away from the published books. It wasn't always clear why the showrunners did this. We didn't know if the new material was their own creation or instead something which GRRM told them about but hadn't published yet. GRRM's British editor and some of his collaborators on other works have panned many text deviations. There are far too many changes to discuss but I did want to list four I thought most significant. Again there will be some inevitable spoilers listed. But, honestly there's not much left to spoil. Most main characters are now at the same place on screen and book. The last book was published in 2011. This year viewers saw things book readers didn't know about. I wasn't crazy about Season Five but I also wasn't crazy about the source material upon which it largely drew, the books A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons.

Shireen, Stannis and Selyse are still alive. 

This all grew out a fundamental difference in how Benioff and Weiss saw Stannis and how Martin wrote him. Stannis is an unpleasant man. Virtually no one in the Seven Kingdoms likes the man. He has the personality of a lobster. He's married to a less than attractive woman. He has no sons. No one wants to marry his daughter. Still, Stannis' defining characteristic so far in the published books has not been ambition, as Benioff and Weiss have shown, but rather duty. This is repeated over and over and over in the books. Stannis does things which are required because they are required. His own personal desires are less important. Stannis almost starved to death resisting a year long siege during Robert's Rebellion, long after most men would have surrendered because his older brother, whom he saw as the rightful king, told him to hold Storm's End. Stannis, at least in the books, was less interested in being king because of his desires but because according to the rules, after Robert's demise, Stannis was the man who should have become king. Rules and duty. It's only later that Stannis considers that he can do good for the realm as king. That's partly why he was the only Lord to take seriously the Night Watch's call for assistance. I'm not saying that Stannis has no ambition or hypocrisies. He's not a "good" man. But at this point in the books whatever ambition he has is still outweighed by his outrage that the rules have been broken. Of course in Stannis' case he would be well served by the rules being followed so no matter what he does in book or show he will be seen as self-serving. If, after your parents pass away, and someone steals your entire inheritance, will you really listen to a third person who tells you to let it go and stop being greedy and self-serving? Or will you perhaps decide that the fight is worth it. If the Shireen burning really did come from Word of God (Martin) then it is what it is I guess. But for Stannis to murder his only heir seems grotesque and completely out of character for a man who made these quotes in the books:

It is not a question of wanting. The throne is mine, as Robert's heir. That is law. After me, it must pass to my daughter, unless Selyse should finally give me a son. I am king. Wants do not enter into it. I have a duty to my daughter. To the realm. Even to Robert. He loved me but little, I know, yet he was my brother. The Lannister woman gave him horns and made a motley fool of him. She may have murdered him as well, as she murdered Jon Arryn and Ned Stark. For such crimes there must be justice. Starting with Cersei and her abominations. But only starting. I mean to scour that court clean. As Robert should have done after the Trident.

In the books Stannis has marched off to an offpage battle against the Bolton armies. Despite setbacks he's alive and kicking in the last published book and released excerpts from book six. And as he explains to Theon Greyjoy, whom he immediately despises, he's not exactly messing his pants at the prospect of throwing down with Ramsay Snow.

I defeated your uncle Victarion and his Iron Fleet off Fair Isle, the first time your father crowned himself. I held Storm's End against the power of the Reach for a year, and took Dragonstone from the Targaryens. I smashed Mance Rayder at the Wall, though he had twenty times my numbers. Tell me, turncloak, what battles has the Bastard of Bolton ever won that I should fear him?

Sansa was not married to Ramsay Bolton or raped by him.

This may have been the biggest single deviation from the books this season and the one which worked the least. This got all sorts of criticism because of the wedding night rape scene, which caused some bloggers and other viewers to stop watching the show. Ramsay is who he is. He rapes, murders and tortures. The fact of the rape didn't bother me as much as the fact that Sansa never should have been there in the first place. In the books, there was a wedding scene and a rape. It was FAR worse in the book. I had to put the book down for a moment to wonder about the mind that conceived such things. But it wasn't Sansa who suffered. It was Theon (will he ever get a break) and Jeyne Poole. Jeyne Poole is Sansa's friend and the daughter of the Winterfell Steward. When Ned Stark and his household were murdered in King's Landing, Jeyne was seized by Littlefinger and put to work in his brothels. When the Boltons have taken over Winterfell and need a patina of legitimacy, Littlefinger sells or gifts Jeyne to the Boltons. Jeyne is forced to pretend that she is Arya Stark. Obviously Roose, Ramsay and Theon know that this isn't the case, and probably so do some of the Northern Lords who attend the wedding. But with Roose, appearances must be kept up. No one, least of all Theon, has the guts to say that Jeyne isn't Arya. Some of Ramsay's abuse of Jeyne may well be related to the fact that she's not a real Stark. In the books, Sansa is still under Littlefinger's control. They are in The Vale. No one knows who Sansa is though some suspect. Sansa is governess to her sickly cousin Robert/Robin Arryn, also kept under close watch by Littlefinger.
It's very strongly hinted that Littlefinger struggles to maintain control of himself around Sansa. He jumps back and forth between trying to creep on her and portraying himself as her impressive intelligent father figure (who also still wants to creep on her). He reveals to Sansa how he's bribed and corrupted some of the Vale Lords. Littlefinger drops a few hints about his master plan, which may involve getting rid of Sansa's cousin, and marrying off Sansa to the Vale heir before revealing Sansa's true identity. This would allow her to make a claim to the Riverlands (through Catelyn) and The North (through Ned) backed up by the unvarnished power of The Vale (which stayed out of the wars). She could theoretically control almost half of the Seven Kingdoms.

Of course this is Littlefinger we're talking about so it's doubtful he's telling all or even any of the truth. Nevertheless he definitely views Sansa as an important asset. For both political and more personal reasons Littlefinger would not let Sansa out of his sight. This is why the televised version didn't ring true. Given that the Iron Throne still wants Sansa Stark for the murder of Joffrey (something arranged by Littlefinger and the Queen of Thorns) even a coldly ambitious Lord like Roose Bolton would think twice before allowing Ramsay to marry Sansa and thus make an open enemy of the Lannisters. I understand that the show runners didn't want to have Sophie Turner stuck all season in the Vale watching Littlefinger twirl his mustache and laugh evilly but it simply didn't make sense for Sansa to willingly walk into the clutches of a family that was well known for betraying her own. It did violence to her character and storyline. I don't think it added anything to the tale. In the books, Brienne is not in the North. She's still wandering around the Riverlands looking for Sansa Stark.



Northern Resistance

Speaking of Sansa the sole television Northern Resistance seems to have been reduced to a few grimy peasants muttering "The North Remembers" and an offscreen Northern Lord refusing to pay Bolton taxes. Well it's important to remember that the Starks have been in charge of the North since time immemorial. They aren't always liked but they are generally respected and even loved. In the books, Northerners who don't even know or like Stannis decide to join his march on Winterfell to save "The Ned's little girl". Other Northerners who can't act openly because some of their relatives are still held as hostages find other devious and deadly ways to express their displeasure. The Lannisters and Boltons aren't the only people who can get down and dirty. I hope that this will be shown in greater detail next season. In the Riverlands, Arya's wolf, Nymeria is still attacking Freys and Lannisters, though (like Arya?) she may have become completely feral. She's leading a wolfpack of over one hundred. Someone else is also killing Freys both in the North (several of them came North with Roose) and in the Riverlands. Again I'd like to see a lot of this shown next season. Time will tell. It was only nodded to in the show via an offhand remark by Roose, but the Boltons can't rule solely by terror. The North is too big and has too many other scary people. There were a lot of families who lost people at the Red Wedding. They're mad. They want revenge. Their patience is at an end. And the Boltons and Theon are not the only people who know that Rickon is alive. Purely for context it also would have been nice if the show had more greatly emphasized the long planned treachery of the Freys and especially the Boltons. The Boltons have had it in for the Starks for centuries. The Frey's sigil is a double cross. That tells you all you need to know right there. In the books, Roose Bolton, once he had a command and relative independence of action from Robb, proceeded to use houses that were more loyal to the Starks as cannon fodder. Most of the people who are aware of Roose's deliberately suicidal orders are dead, which is just the way Roose likes it. Unlike his illegitimate son, Roose is a very cautious calculating man.



Jaime is not in Dorne. Myrcella is still alive.

Myrcella didn't die in the books. She was wounded by a Dornish retainer who wanted to start a war. I thought the Dorne sections of the books were interminable. They contributed a lot to my dislike of A Feast For Crows. I understand that Martin wanted to move away from the Stark-Lannister battle royale that had consumed much of the story but I wasn't ready for him to do that. This was made worse by the fact that virtually nothing happened in Dorne. The ruler, Prince Doran likes it this way. As he explains to his nieces, the Sand Snakes:

I am not blind, nor deaf. I know you all believe me weak, frightened, feeble. Your father knew me better. Oberyn was ever the viper. Deadly, dangerous, unpredictable. No man dared tread on him. I was the grass. Pleasant, complaisant, sweet-smelling, swaying with every breeze. Who fears to walk upon the grass? But it is the grass that hides the viper from his enemies and shelters him until he strikes.

Doran is playing a very long game, the details of which aren't important now and/or are too spoilery. But suffice it to say that he, like Oberyn and many other people in Dorne, has not forgotten the rape and murder of his sister Elia and her children. Another difference is that as Dorne practices equal inheritance, Trystane, Doran's son, is not his heir. Doran's heir is his oldest child, his daughter Arianne Martell, apparently dropped from the HBO adaptation. It's Arianne who schemes, not to kill Myrcella, but to declare Myrcella as Queen, attempting to apply Dornish succession laws to King's Landing. Rather than being insanely vengeful towards Myrcella on account of Oberyn's death, Ellaria thinks enough blood has been shed. She counsels patience and acceptance. Jaime doesn't ever go to Dorne. He's in the Riverlands trying to clean up after the war, live up to his oath to Catelyn Stark to find the Stark girls and not take up arms against Tullys or Starks (not that there are many left). Jaime is undergoing a lot of introspection about his past actions and what it means to be a knight and Kingsguard member. So I get that this might not make for exciting television. But I thought that a daughter finding out a horrible family secret, being okay with it and then apparently dying in her father's arms was horribly cliched. In the books the Sand Snakes merely ask Doran for vengeance for Oberyn. He has them all arrested and imprisoned. 


So I understand why Benioff and Weiss made many changes from books I thought were less than gripping. Some of their changes were actually good ones. In the books Jon Snow does not go to Hardhome and engage in a desperate battle against the White Walkers and the Night King. Many show only viewers I know thought that was a high point of the season. But too often the showrunners tried to ante up the shocks and violence, often needlessly. I sometimes think that the showrunners (and GRRM?) have fallen in love with shocking people too much. The books may have had too many details of political manipulation and the war's aftermath. But the show went too far in the other direction. Barristan is still alive in the books. I thought his show death was well done but unnecessary. Loras is never arrested. Jorah never got greyscale. I did like the increasingly strong hints that maybe, just maybe Ned didn't break his marriage vows, a theory which is not confirmed in the books.

What did you think of this season?

Movie Reviews: Run All Night

Run All Night

directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

The director who helmed this film also directed Orphan and Non-Stop as well as the film Unknown. The latter two films also featured Liam Neeson, as does Run All Night. So I was interested in seeing this film not just because of Neeson but also because of the director. I wasn't too disappointed. Neeson brings his usual gravelly authority to his role as a wastrel. Collet-Serra uses a tremendous number of closeups and other intimate filmic and camera techniques to make you emotionally bond with and believe in this story even though it is a tale which you have seen and read a million times before. In some many most respects this is just a remake or update of Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition. So though it's a cliche to say so, if you liked that movie you may well like this one. The only real difference is that in this film the protective father is not seen through the guileless and loving eyes of his underage son but rather is viewed through the judgmental and even hateful eyes of an adult son who does not consider his father to be part of his family. And the son has very good reasons for feeling that way. I know some people who have or too often had (time moves on) great relations with their father. I know others who have or had somewhat conflicted relations with their father. And I know a small handful of people who hate or hated their father with the white hot burning intensity of a thousand supernova. I can't really understand the last group of people but then again my experiences were very different. Run All Night, to its credit, doesn't immediately try to force you into wanting a reconciliation between father and son, even though it's something which the father needs very much. There are only a few initial sentimental tugs at the heartstrings. I suppose they are very well done if you are partial to that sort of thing. I thought some of this was a little bit unrealistic but that's just me.

Jimmy Conlan (Neeson) is an aging and nearly broken down executioner for the Irish mob in New York. If it is a sign of our humanity that most of us are bothered by killing, then Jimmy is all too human. He's killed more people than cancer. He's tortured by his past actions. He suffers nightmares. Jimmy drinks to dull the pain. And then he drinks just to drink. For whatever reason Jimmy doesn't have very much wealth to show for his long life of criminality and murder. He barely has two dimes to rub together. The same can't be said of Jimmy's best and oldest friend, Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris in a typically intense performance), the organization's boss and a very wealthy man. Although Shawn's the boss and also a murderer, it was Jimmy's moves that put him in the big seat and kept him there. Shawn remembers this, which is why he's always looking out for Jimmy and forgiving him trespasses which would have seen other people left floating in the river. Shawn is a loyal man who believes in doing things by the code. Each man has a son who vexes him. For Jimmy, it's Mike (Joel Kinnaman), a boxing trainer and limo driver who likes to pretend that his father doesn't exist. For Shawn it's Danny (Boyd Holbrook), a member of his father's organization who is obviously not there on merit. Danny is too ambitious to realize when he makes bad decisions. When he does something stupid and disobeys his father's orders he crosses one of Jimmy's redlines. Well. Blood is thicker than water for most people. Usually anyway. If someone I'm related to gets into it with someone else I'm going to take my relative's side even if he's wrong. We can work out those details later. I'm not going to be neutral about someone laying hands on my kin, even if it's deserved. And wouldn't you know it, Shawn feels the same way. A lifetime of friendship is destroyed in one night. And in one night a father and son must find a way to trust each other if they want to see morning. Common and Vincent D'Onofrio give yeoman work as a freelance hitman and a cynical but uncorrupted detective, respectively.

This was not a great movie but I enjoyed it. Both Neeson and Harris are getting a little long in the tooth for these roles. But each actor exudes authority when they walk into the room. The film is much the better for their presence. Nick Nolte has a blink and you'll miss it cameo. There is the normal amount of mayhem, rough language and mano-a-mano showdowns.

TRAILER

The Real Housewives of Westeros

Because, why not? I liked the little details in this video, such as Sansa's constant snacking on lemon cakes, Ellaria's accent, Stannis' obsession with grammar and Cersei's snarky guarantee that her wine is "poison free". There is a soap opera quality to some of Martin's written work so a Real Housewives of Westeros makes sense.