Empire State (2013)

Chris Hemsworth is Chris Potamitis, the eldest child of a Greek immigrant family living in America who thirsts for greater purpose in a world of crime, thuggery and greed.

Always at his side is his stereotypically loud-mouthed, crass mate Eddie, who does not understand why Chris would want to aspire to bigger things. Eddie's attitude reflects that of his struggling family who are constantly bogged down in poverty and surrounded by negativity.

As Chris struggles to do good in the world, he finds himself knocked down a peg when his partner is killed during a robbery after he takes a security guard job, and Chris is once again thrust into a world of crime as he tries to make something out of the situation he's in, eventually leading to greater and more dangerous repercussions than he could imagine.

There's lots of potential in Empire State, and all the elements of a good thriller are here. The trailer certainly set the stage for a grand drama. Unfortunately, this film is less than the sum of its parts. All of the necessary ingredients are in the recipe, but they are delivered without any real bang. Set pieces fizzle, and the tired American stereotypes tested my patience. There are twists that will peak your interest and there is some good character development on Hemsworth's behalf, but it all feels rather unambitious. The narrative never takes the time to slow down crucial moments and transitions from scene to scene of fast-talking Latin-Americans. Visually, the 80s have been better depicted in many other films. Some care and passion in the production process would have created a better product.

Worth the price of admission? Hard to say. It's easy to enjoy if you're not too critical, but there are much better offerings both in the genre and from 2013.

Fmovies: In this movie there's a really annoying guy who is kind of like Edward Norton's little brother or something. The only reason you won't abort the movie is because you want to see him die and you keep watching to see "Is he going to die? I hope he dies so I can turn this movie off" Also you hope for the Rock to show up but he doesn't. He has 5ish minutes of screen time and the rest of the time my fists are clenched as I try to literally summon the power of Goku and go super saiyan doing a kamehameha that could destroy the world itself because it would be worth it to end this movie. Liam Hemsworth fans, you can still watch this because the whole movie is just looking at him doing nothing. So either watch this or buy a poster and look at it for hour and a half, same thing. Still this movie was better than Iron Man 3. One star.

The movie begins with catching scenes and interesting plot, but then everything goes from bad to worse. Randomly put scenes, boring characters, too *realistic* representation of the 1980-ies and detectives that don't see the clues even if you poke their eyes with the obvious.

There are no action scenes, no comedy scenes, just some boring backgrounds with randomly placed actors talking to each other with much development of the story.

If you have time to lose and want to see the gangster's side of the epoch, watch, else better skip it.

Empire State fmovies. In the 80's, in New York, Chris Potamitis (Liam Hemsworth) had dreamed on joining the police academy but his best friend Eddie (Michael Angarano) destroyed his dreams being caught by the police with marijuana together with him. Chris is hired by the Empire State Company to work as security guard in an armored truck with the driver Tony (Michael Rispoli). When Tony is murdered in a heist and the Empire States does not pay the insurance to the widow, Chris decides to steal money from the depository to give to her. Chris comments with Eddie, who is a lowlife and bigmouth person, the fails in the security system of the Empire State and Eddie plots a scheme with another smalltime criminal to steal the money from the depositary. The FBI agents do not believe that two morons like Eddie and Chris could have planned the heist but the experienced Detective Ransome (Dwayne Johnson) follows his instincts to solve the case.

"Empire State" is movie apparently based on a true story with one of the most unpleasant and irritating characters of the cinema history, the loser Eddie. Consequently the performance of Michael Angarano is top- notch. On the other size, Chris Potamitis is shown as a naive and quite innocent victim of the heist but it is hard to believe in this character. Therefore, despite the good performances, the screenplay is badly written and waste the good cast. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

This has got to be one of the worst heist movies I have ever seen. Usually I just try to go with the flow since it's just a movie. But the really dumb aspects of this movie just really becomes overbearing after a while. It does start out okay, with some decent acting. It even has a good cast, although only one of them seemed to be actually trying. After viewing it though, it just seemed like a movie where the actors just came together in order to make a few quick bucks. The writer of this movie did a horrendous job, I am not sure if they intentionally decided to make a bad movie for the audiences to roast upon. But I got zero enjoyment out of this and got really boring and slow really really quickly. None of the characters are likable or even interesting. Watching this movie just made me angry, it's not even a okay way to pass the time even if you have nothing to do. Just pass on this one, there are better heist movies out there. Heck there are way better straight to DVD movies out there.

2.5/10

(Credit IMDb) A drama centered on two childhood friends who plan to rob an armored car depository, and the NYPD officer who stands in their way.

I've seen a lot worse when it comes to STD movies, but this just wasn't all that interesting in the whole scheme of things. For a true story, you would think more effort would be necessary. My main problem with Empire State is how bland it is. It doesn't have that much action what so ever, and it lacks the emotional punch needed for a film of this magnitude, and the cast just simply isn't up for the challenge. I garnered no emotional stimulus between Chris (Liam Hemsworth) & Michael Angarano (Eddie) because not only did the film not make me care about their fates, but their performances were rather poor. Liam Hemsworth is not lead material, and made for a very boring lead. He also felt miscast, and forced in the lead role. Michael Angarano isn't much better. He grated my nerves with his wise-ass character, and I felt like smacking that smug look off his face. His chemistry with Hemsworth was off as well. Dwayne Johnson is criminally wasted in this movie as a detective. Whenever he appeared on screen, my interest level was raised significantly, but that was much too seldom for my liking. Dwayne has a gift when it comes to charisma, and the fact that he has such a small role here is incorrigible. He was far too good to have such a small part in this movie. Emma Roberts is barely in this movie, aside from a few pointless scenes. We get scattered clips in the beginning and the end of the real life events that took place, but it didn't matter much to me.

Final Thoughts: A rather mundane account of a true story. I'm not gonna tell you to avoid it, but don't expect riveting entertainment. It's not a very good movie, and it went straight to DVD for a reason.

4/10