American Renegades

American Renegades

“American Renegades,” an action-comedy about a French-American army heist, is basically “Ocean’s 11” meets “The Expendables.” It’s not as fun as that sounds, though. Look, I know the “Expendables” and “Ocean’s” movies are mostly dumb-but-enjoyable baubles they have to be; it’s fun watching attractive celebrities be confident and stylish while doing impossible things like shooting guns in Assmanistan (“Expendables 3”) or robbing Al Pacino (“Ocean’s 13”).

But here’s the thing: “American Renegades” is bad on two levels the expected one (it’s somehow just as shallow as both the “Expendables” films, and to a far lesser extent, the “Ocean’s” movies) and the unexpected one: This essential shallowness could really use Clooney or Sly Stallone. Because movies about super teams of stock characters Dynamite Guy! Sexy Leader! Dumb Loverboy! are only fun when celebrities (or accomplished character actors, whichever comes first) do something light and silly, like recovering a sunken Bosnian treasure trove of art and gold that was stolen by Nazis back in WWII. Not so much when it’s B-movie neophytes trying to sell a slick but hollow scenario for a high-concept genre hybrid. On paper, sure. On screen? Nah.

So: Sexy Leader (Sullivan Stapleton from “Animal Kingdom”), an American soldier stationed overseas who is convinced by Dumb Loverboy (Charlie Bewley), his second in command well, if not dumb exactly then certainly less smart than Sexy that Loverboy’s hot Bosnian girlfriend Femme Fatale with a Heart of Gold (Sylvia Hoeks) is on the up-and-up about telling them where to find this underwater cache of Nazi gold.

So they assemble their crew: Dynamite Guy (Dimitri Leonidas), also dumb but less fun Rage Case (Diarmaid Murtagh) and under-developed but somehow also self-aware Token Black Guy (Joshua Henry). And then shenanigans, my friend. In Bosnia. While their commanding officer, Comical Hard-Ass (J.K. Simmons in the movie’s only fun performance), mostly sits this one out (priorities, y’know?).

Apart from Simmons who does not get fed nearly enough scenery the rest of the cast is actually, Mostly Fine. Though they also deliver performances that are Mostly Undistinguished. The problem is: I, as a viewer, have to find these guys charming if this kind of thinking light genre exercise is going to work. Unfortunately, I did not care about these actors when their stock characters did anything together, not even when they created a diversion by getting into a contrived (and visually uninspired) tussle with a pack of British SAS army men. Because again, the film’s cast members are Mostly Not Bad, but also Mostly Not Good. If you’re neither overwhelmingly clever nor consummately cute … why bother making this type of lip-teasingly precious (half-winking, half old fashioned) B-movie?

Let me back up for a second. When I say that “American Renegades” isn’t clever, I’m saying that this film’s visual strengths often far outweigh everything else. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much. Just look at the film’s cold opening looting montage. Without almost any dialogue we see: French paintings getting loaded up by Nazis in oh it’s France there’s the Eiffel Tower but oh the Nazis are leaving and they’ve got bars of gold too from an unknown origin and oh whoa there’s a French lady telling her son to flee wait is she French she’s not speaking French what language is that also I don’t know if she’s Jewish or a collaborator or a Nazi or freedom righter or what exactly am I looking at here?

I had to rewatch this opening sequence three times before I understood what was happening. Which is kind of a problem when your film opens with an overly-complicated montage that ineffectively serves as a one stop shop for all your establishing plot needs including mysterious dangling conclusion involving a bunch of random freedom fighters whose leader briefly shows himself and prepares to use one of those cool looking plungers that you always see Wile E. Coyote using to blow himself up. Those freedom fighter guys, by the way? No idea who they were or what their deal was because there was pretty much no dialogue to establish a meaningful relationship between them and the viewer. The looting montage finally ends with a title card: “American Renegades.” Oh great now the movie starts?

I can see why someone might take to “American Renegades” on account of its confident visuals and snarky humor. But I did not, because it takes too much time for me to figure out why I’m looking at, well, anything. Because once I did figure out what I was looking at, the film’s skin-deep style and juvenile humor made me wonder why I worked so hard in the first place! “American Renegades” may be of some interest because it requires viewers to take a little more effort to assemble the film’s jokes and plot. But as Gene Shalit might have said: this movie often tested my patience so I did not enjoy it.

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