After having a psychologically tiring day at the office, I felt the need to watch some funny stuff and fortunately, this movie (which I believe should be funny based on the trailer I've seen earlier) just premiered. Coincidentally, my wife was having the same feeling, so she agreed to watch this too and she helped me buy the tickets for 7.15PM show. Since the time was quite late, I still managed to have a bite before the movie started. There were some new trailers of the upcoming movies prior to the start of the movie, which made my wife and I ecstatic such as Tarzan, Ghostbusters, Independence Day:Resurgence and some others. Anyway, let's start with the movie itself.
Brief Story Line
Movie started with scene from 1996 where a young high school student was bullied for being different by some other students led by Trevor and thrown into the school hall naked where all students were present to hear speech from Calvin "Golden Jet" Joyner the student voted to be most likely to success. Calvin felt sorry and immediately gave his jacket so the boy can cover himself. He was very thankful to Calvin and ran out of the hall.
Twenty years later, Calvin now become an accountant and was feeling down after seeing his former assistant promoted to a partner in his firm faster than him. He expressed his disappointment to his wife Maggie who was his high school girlfriend (played by Danielle Nicolet) and rejected Maggie's request to go to the high school reunion since he wanted to avoid being asked how he was doing now and so on.
When Calvin was at the office, he befriended with a guy called Bob Stone in Facebook who claimed to be his high school friend that was bullied 20 years ago. Calvin met Bob in a bar and was very surprised to see him changed into a very big, tall, muscular guy (played by Dwayne Johnson - Fast Furious series, San Andreas etc). He was even more surprised when Bob was apparently having a good fighting skill and fend off some bad guys in the bar.
After having a fun night, Bob requested Calvin's help to look into his personal offshore account, using Calvin's knowledge in forensic accounting. The account seemed to be an account used for bidding and after Bob accidentally dropped the coffee on the laptop, they stopped checking and Bob stayed for the night.
On the following day, few CIA agents led by Agent Pamela (played by Amy Ryan - Birdman, Goosebumps etc) came to Calvin's house to arrest Bob who was apparently a former CIA agent himself but selling a secret data that can open up the information of all agents around the world and murdered his partner Phil (played by Aaron Paul). Calvin who was surprised of these facts was forced to help CIA to capture Bob. He was used as bait and came to office where all hell breaks lose when Bob really came and made Calvin unwillingly became his accomplish. Calvin managed to escape from Bob and again asked by CIA agents to help them capture Bob.
So will Calvin help CIA to capture Bob? Is Bob really the bad guy that CIA claimed to be? Is there some other explanation? Find them all till the completion of the movie.
End of Brief Story Line
My wife and I quite enjoyed the film. There were quite a number of fun scenes and some touching scenes. Kevin Hart gave a lot of funny remarks and I personally think that he was the star of this movie. He was quite believable as a high school student who seemed to be having the brightest future but fail to live up to expectation (at least according to himself). Meanwhile Dwayne Johnson gave a good performance in the fighting and action sequence. There was also a surprise showing of Jason Bateman as the older Trevor and cameo appearance by a famous funny actress before the end of the movie.
I believe this movie can be classified as action-comedy with emphasis on giving a strong moral message about the bad things of bullying as it would usually leave the person being bullied scarred for life. And the worst part was generally, the person who bully did not even realize or felt sorry for bullying just like it was pictured in this film.
If you want to enjoy some fun, without over thinking and watching Kevin Hart's jokes combined with The Rock's fighting skills, this one certainly fits your liking. But please do not expect non-stop laughing as sometimes it was combined with the relationship scenes between the two of them. There were plenty of enjoyable scenes as well, but my most memorable scene was during the therapy session of Calvin, Maggie and Dr. Dan.
Please do not leave your seat very fast as there were some funny bloopers/gag reel (scenes that did not make the movie as they were usually wrong acting, or the actors laughed at serious scenes etc). This would give you extra laughter.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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