Pablo Schreiber; three-for-three suit stores; Los Angeles Fed; school rivalry; Benihana; misdirected stripper texts; gearing up; Angel City Donuts; 50 Cent’s film career
Apex: Butler's second career phase is associated with this film, but 300 remains a competing first peak and receives an explicit preference; participants disagree about which has the stronger present identity.
Pablo Schreiber is affirmed for this film, with The Wire as the alternative.
The specific three-for-three suit store is an affirmative Apex choice, distinguished from all suit stores.
The Los Angeles Federal Reserve Bank is an affirmative Apex choice.
Describing things as Fort Knox is proposed without a settled affirmative choice.
Long Beach Poly versus South Torrance is affirmed, particularly for South Torrance. — Chris Ryan
Shooting ranges lose to Beverly Hills Cop II because of their greater importance to its plot. — Chris Ryan
Benihana is counted as an affirmative Apex choice after the hosts ask the director in the audience whether the location qualifies. — Chris Ryan
Accidental texts intended for a stripper but sent to a wife are an affirmative film-specific Apex choice; Tiger Woods is offered outside movies. — Chris Ryan
Second-generation Heat films are debated through Den of Thieves, The Town, Triple Frontier, and Widows; no final winner is established.
Putting on protective gear for a street gunfight after a heist is affirmed as an Apex choice.
O'Shea Jackson Jr. is considered against Straight Outta Compton; one participant identifies him with Donnie, while another predicts the sequel will be his peak.
Bad things happening in donut stores lose to Boogie Nights, with a note that Buck's experience eventually funds his stereo shop. — Chris Ryan
Drinking milk from the carton is compared with Anchorman. — Chris Ryan
Angel City Donuts itself is affirmed as an Apex choice. — Chris Ryan
50 Cent is praised for fitting the ensemble and playing off Pablo without his celebrity overwhelming the character. This is affirmed as his movie Apex, distinct from the larger career peak of Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Keeping him alive for the sequel is proposed. — Van Lathan
The opening donut-store robbery establishes an eerie, empty Los Angeles atmosphere late at night. — Chris Ryan
The opening robbery establishes military training, theft of the truck rather than its contents, and escalation to killing police. A guard reaching for coffee becomes a fatal mistake. — Van Lathan
Nick’s crime-scene entrance combines eating a donut, apparently avoiding its blood, with quick deductions about the getaway and cigarette and vegan insults. His sleepless appearance contrasts with his investigative ability. — Chris Ryan
The driving flashback introducing Donnie to the crew remains understandable despite the chronology. Mirrored briefings and the later explanation of Donnie’s information connect the police and robbers. — Chris Ryan
The untraceable shredded-currency premise is accepted despite its elaborate mechanics and the easier alternative of an ordinary bank robbery. Comparisons with Heat and Fast Five lead to a wish for simpler Fast franchise heists.
The prom-date intimidation scene is praised for 50 Cent, the assembled garage crew, and the return deadline. A participant imagines Ringer film enthusiasts intimidating his own daughter’s date.
Benihana is a favorite scene for Nick’s crude restaurant insults, high-school rivalry, Samoan and Spam taunts, and Merrimen’s demand to respect family. The hosts initially acknowledge uncertainty about whether the restaurant is literally Benihana.
The hosts speculate about the football positions Merrimen and Nick could have played, with Merrimen’s leadership questioned as a quarterback. Long Beach Poly’s stronger program complicates Nick’s boasting. — Bill Simmons
Nick's boast about beating Long Beach Poly is questioned because of that program's strength and Antonio Pierce's coaching connection; the Benihana confrontation nearly becomes a fight before Nick leaves. — Chris Ryan
Donnie's apparent impending murder in the tent, with acid and protective equipment, is compared with the realization of danger in Goodfellas, Lethal Weapon 2, and Speed. — Chris Ryan
The gun-range confrontation shows Nick impressed by Merrimen's shooting and establishes mutual admiration alongside recognition of danger.
The fake Pico Savings robbery is a rewatchable swerve, using the familiar claim that the robbers want the bank’s money rather than the customers’ money. — Chris Ryan
Donnie emerging from the cash container and stealing the money while the cameras are off is praised as especially tense. — Chris Ryan
The hosts mock the women eating Chinese food that has spent several days in an air duct.
One participant favors the final 66 minutes, beginning with Nick leaving the playground, while distinguishing the emotional appeal of Benihana from the technical achievement of the corridor shootout. — Bill Simmons
Nick crashing his wife’s date to sign divorce papers is nominated for his taking food and drinks, claiming ownership, and invoking his own police status. — Van Lathan
The date’s humiliation is debated: one response says he must stand up to Nick to preserve the relationship, while another says he cannot recover. — Van Lathan
The bank-robbery setup comes first: meticulous crime setups are a favorite, with the crew entering in painter jackets with fluorescent strips.
Asked what disguise they would use for a heist, the picks are plumbers and a cable repairman installing the jails network, while another wants only to be the driver.
The driver pitch prompts jokes about a risky U-turn bit and a terrifying wheelman, plus disappointment that the movie has no second switch van.
Watching the people in line invites imagining your own move as a hostage: get straight down with hands visible, or offer to help the robbers.
One of Clive Owen's best scenes is his anger when the Gold Digger ringtone goes off, followed by the strip-to-your-underwear order; it is tense because the character's limits are still unknown, and shuffling the hostages is disorienting.
The first Foster-Plummer scene shows two strong actors, with Foster coming in off the bench, and the conversation is staged on the Brooklyn Promenade for scenery.
The video-game scene is offered as a controversial pick: some found it hacky social commentary, but the speaker enjoyed Owen vibing with the boy, and their son asked if the game was real.
Spike, pushing 50, is seen reacting to a generational gap in hip-hop culture, both criticizing it and trying to understand it; it plays a little old-guy. — Sean Fennessey
Spike also added the imagined raid scene for action; the video game likewise slows the film but gives Owen a quieter moment, and the boy relates more to Owen than to Denzel.
The boy's 50 Cent line is a little clumsy, but Spike committing to it and building the game from scratch is appreciated.
The first Clive-Denzel phone call, with the pina colada and Amber-and-Tiffany back-and-forth, is praised as hard to pull off on a phone.
Other beats listed are the first Owen-Foster meeting, and the hostage-release reveal that everyone is "actually hostage," a voila moment.
The last Plummer-Foster scene, with "I sold my soul" and her Bin Laden's nephew joke, is named the speaker's pick for most rewatchable, a chess match and the exclamation point of the film.
As a cap, the Foster-Denzel courthouse exchange with the Baron Rothschild blood-in-the-streets line is added, along with the interrogations, which the speaker read were improvised but was unsure count as scenes. — Sean Fennessey
A dark-horse pick is the sequence where the police try to identify the Albanian recording: the most New York sequence, with the body-bags line and the woman with the bag of parking tickets.
The nominees are the cop-killers line, Nick telling his ex-wife's new boyfriend to give him a hug and save a fortune on therapy, and Merriman's family-here, popping-off speech from Benihana, performed standing up; dates would have worked better than family, though 50's wife is at the table.
Merriman's dying line that he told Nick he was not going back inside is loved for bragging while his lungs fill with blood.
The Federal Reserve lets a delivery guy up to the offices; Merriman's crew would have killed Donnie or cut ties before the heist; 50 Cent worries more about the prom date than his own death; the crew never tries to drive out of the stalled traffic; the cops would not start a shootout among civilians; Nick should have expected the big gun; Nick running after all the smoking and donuts; the women complaining about the old food; Nick checking the Hofbrau for Donnie afterward; Nick blowing Donnie's cover at Benihana; the Chinese food stinking in the ceiling
Less secure workplaces than the Federal Reserve still make you meet the delivery guy in the lobby rather than letting him up to the offices.
The biggest nitpick is that Schreiber's crew would kill Donnie or cut ties right after Benihana; the counter is that they need him connected so the cops go to the fake location on Friday, with the plan presumably to kill him afterward.
50 Cent cares more about intimidating his daughter's prom date than about his own life; the defense is that the robbers are shown as happy family men in deliberate contrast with Nick, a menace to everyone who is not a cop.
The crew never tries to drive out of the stalled traffic, which bothers one host every time, and the cops probably would not open fire with a hundred civilians sitting there, though they did not expect all of what happened.
Minor nits: Butler had been at the gun range with Merriman yet is surprised by the big rifle, and a man who smokes, eats donuts and stays up until six every night is unlikely to run more than fifty feet in the athletic chase, adrenaline or not.
One host has no nits because the movie is perfect; the earlier confusion over why the women complained about the old food is resolved by realizing Donnie knew the robbers were tapping the restaurant's phone calls and needed them to believe everything.
Butler checking the Hofbrau for Donnie days after the heist, as if a man who broke out of handcuffs would go back to work, is odd; the Hofbrau itself is an amazing bit, a German soccer bar populated only by federal employees, cops and bank robbers.
Earlier Benihana nits: Nick blows Donnie's cover right away, and a crew that killed four cops would have the city locked down rather than played out, though the cops have no evidence and want to kill rather than arrest.
Chinese food sitting in the ceiling for a week and a half would have stunk up the men's room; packing it in an ice chest inside the bag is proposed and rejected because the bag would have been noticed on the first delivery.
One host calls this Butler's apex one hundred percent, with the movie living on Showtime for a hundred years; the others argue 300 was a bigger cultural moment even though it ended and people are done with it.
It is not 50 Cent's apex, which would be Get Rich or Die Trying rather than a comparison to Ballers.
Pablo Schreiber is a yes, at least right now, although a bigger career is predicted for him, and the Dom Toretto suggestion went unpunished.
Hawthorne gets a no because the film is not really Hawthorne; Long Beach Poly football is weighed against Deshaun Jackson (as transcribed) playing there.
Benihana movie scenes are a yes, with Rocky Aoki and the Benihana episode of The Office beneath it.
Heist movies that rip off Heat are a yes, though one host counters that Dark Knight is the most popular Heat ripoff; this one ends with Butler doing the Pacino and De Niro hand thing despite the two never having a connection beyond shooting side by side at the range.
The new category, from a listener, is to recast one part; two would recast nothing because the movie is perfect, one would put Dave Chappelle in the Mo McCray part, with Kate McKinnon as a joke; asked which part they would play, the answers are Borracho and Murph, and Jamie Foxx is rejected as too old.
The film missed spots to stunt cast: the disgruntled wife could have been someone more famous like a 2019 Catherine Keener or Jessica Alba, and Gus could have been funnier with Chappelle, a take the other two vote down.
Gus could have been dialed up with Dave Chappelle or Jamie Foxx for three jokes, but the others say the film cannot have humor because it is built as Big Nick versus Ray Merriman, two alpha gorillas on a collision course, signaled by the on-screen names and matching back-shot introductions.
Mo McCray's best moment, pulling Big Nick away from the women at Benihana while giving them a salacious look, shows the crew is as dirty as Nick; the Chappelle wish is compared to Laker fans preferring Derek Fisher to Chris Paul.
For 50 Cent's part, Ray Lewis or Ed Reed are imagined as stunt casting, Idris Elba is too famous and old, and swapping Mo McCray and 50 would make a worse movie because the cop needs to be the slimy, skinnier one.
The script floated around for a long time with little record of who nearly played whom; Sylvester Stallone was attached at one point, twenty-five years too late, and on the Skyscraper set The Rock told Pablo Schreiber he was supposed to do the movie ten years earlier, when he would have been a lead rather than the 50 Cent part, since villain Rock still does not exist.
The film had a long, circuitous development of ten or fifteen years, at one point at Relativity, with various names attached; it benefits from not being the Heat setup of two famous stars, since Schreiber and Butler let you lose yourself in the movie.
The shooting range standoff; Pablo Schreiber's performance; Gerard Butler's performance; the cop names Borracho, Murph, Tony Z and Gus; the name Merriman; O'Shea Jackson's arrival; 50 Cent's performance; Pablo Schreiber's chin; the double-date dinner scene
The shooting range, where Merriman unleashes forty bullets in a row and Butler shoots back looking impressed, is their version of the Heat diner scene without any talking.
Schreiber carries his body like an ex-athlete and ex-military man; he was in The Wire season two and Emmy-nominated for Orange Is the New Black yet reads as three different people with the same face, his six-foot-five height may hold him back next to five-foot-eight stars, and the training from 13 Hours shows here.
If Vin Diesel never existed, the first backup pick for Dom Toretto would be Pablo Schreiber, who could do the backyard familia scenes The Rock cannot; four inches shorter he would be Henry Cavill, and he should be the bad guy who joins the gang in a later Fast and Furious.
Butler based the performance heavily on Gene Hackman in French Connection; it is unlike anything else in his career, and he is compared to Devin Booker, a talent who never quite became the top-tier lister the rom-coms sold him as, never getting a Gladiator or Beautiful Mind, though he has the Has Fallen franchise and this is his LA Confidential.
The cop names Borracho, Murph, Tony Z and Gus are great; Merriman is a great name because he is the worst hang of all time, and the host keeps thinking of the football player Sean Merriman.
O'Shea Jackson's arrival as someone who will be in movies for a long time has aged well.
50 Cent is very good at playing the one guy with the volume turned down, giving everything gravity, and never seems to mourn his wife and daughter before the highway shootout; the pushback is that Val Kilmer does more with the same quiet-partner role in Heat, and Ray Lewis or Ed Reed are imagined as stunt casting, while Idris Elba is too famous and flipping Mo McCray with 50 would be worse because of body types.
Pablo's chin is a neat trick: a street fighter either tucks the chin or puts it out daring you to hit it, and Merriman is the guy who always puts it out, which fits his all-in ending.
The double-date dinner scene unapologetically rips off Pacino taking his TV back in Heat and is ludicrous, with no clear motivation for Nick going there or for the wife dating so fast.
The movie is centered on about five rewatchable scenes that bleed into each other, and the last hour and fifteen minutes is one action piece divided into three; one first pick is everything from the Hofbrau introduction through Nick and the LASD clique bracing Donnie in the hotel room.
The case for the opening donut-shop robbery is the eeriness of LA at three or four in the morning once you leave Hollywood for Hawthorne and the side towns off the 10 and the 5, when the traffic is gone and the streets are empty, even if wetting down the streets is a liberty.
The guy in the back of the armored truck has the worst job and always gets blown up; the crew goes straight for the cops and kills the first two in two seconds, which sets a tone unlike Heat, where the crew only fires back at cops as a last resort.
The scene extends to the garage afterward, where the zoom on Pablo staring into the empty truck and the cop-killers line lay the stakes bare: thirty million richer or dead; Butler's entrance eating the donut, the hot-zone exchange and the pain-in-the-ass FBI agent giving him grief, plus the palm-juice piss-test detail, are also loved.
Whether the drill-the-hole, insert-and-open trick on the truck window is a nod to the umbrella trick in the fifties French heist film Rafifi (as transcribed), alongside the obvious Heat hat tips, is raised as a question.
The Hofbrau and the hotel room are where the movie jumps a level: Donnie's plea that he is only a driver, the tasing, the weird hotel with indoor smoking, ladies of the night and chicken tenders, and Nick pointing at his regulators to explain that the clique owns him; catching Donnie this early rather than midway is a different play.
Donnie's story of meeting Merriman at the backyard barbecue, Merriman eating skirt steak with nothing else, the Dasani everywhere, the silver dollar pancakes pause, and the genre's tradition of people eating unhappily outdoors are enjoyed; Nick's ex-wife's dinner party is the only happy meal in the film.
50 Cent's prom-date scene, tucking in the blood handkerchief and leading the kid into the garage to meet the entire Long Beach Poly offensive line plus Pablo Schreiber and the Samoan guys, is played perfectly.
The Benihana scene is one host's favorite scene in the movie; the idea is the Heat move of letting the other crew know you are on to them and applying pressure, and the guess is that ten straight takes were shot before Butler asked to do one completely insane take, which is the one they used.
Benihana nitpicks are part of its rewatch appeal: Nick blows Donnie's cover immediately, and in real life a crew that killed four cops would have the city locked down rather than being followed to dinner, though the cops have no evidence and want to kill rather than arrest them.
Whether this is the best Benihana scene of all time is asked; Benihana is an underused location with the shared table and the knives, and the dream version has Big Nick and Merriman squeezed in beside a family of civilians.
How Merriman's crew set up an entire murder tent in the garage with plastic and a vat of acid between leaving Benihana and getting back is a lingering question, answered with the joke that a four-letter text to Jeff Chow at the Ringer gets the same thing set up in the spare office.
Merriman standing up at the table with the family-here, popping-off line, shot so he looks eighteen feet tall with his chin out and chest tattoos, is a comic-book trick; the revelation that he is Liev Schreiber's half-brother leads to the joke of drafting him too.
The men's suit store meeting is called possibly the greatest scene in American cinema history: cops who are regulars in a lounge at a shop selling leather jackets, cowboy boots and remaindered suits, Butler buying an out-of-style half-duster leather jacket and drinking coffee from porcelain, and Donnie openly meeting them in public, compared to the Hamburger Hamlet emergency meeting in Entourage.
The personal-life interlude that follows the suit store is too much, the same problem as Heat, although Heat's relationships are detailed enough not to feel like a waste while the ex-wife here has no personality; Natalie Portman could be cut from Heat, a debate saved for the hundredth episode.
The locked-and-loaded scene is a high-level version of the action-movie staple, with Gus's visualization techniques and Pablo Schreiber's rifle lesson to Donnie played as a clip; the crew carries thousands of bullets and still runs out.
The three final robberies are the Pico Savings and Loan fake hostage situation, which one host found a mail-in that needed a more frightened bank manager, the long and elaborate Federal Reserve heist, and the highway shootout; the Chinese food sitting in the ceiling for a week is flagged as a nitpick.
The Kaiser Soze reveal at the end does not need rewatching once you have it, though O'Shea Jackson's English accent is loved; the guess is that the original script was Merriman versus Nick and the Donnie plot was expanded so the last two scenes set up a sequel.
Two go with Benihana as the one to stop channel-flipping for; the third has two answers, the shooting range standoff on a first viewing and, after five or six viewings, the hotel room interview where Donnie's little traps and the director's traps for the audience become visible, which also shows O'Shea Jackson is a gifted actor and a movie star.
Earlier the Benihana scene is called incredible despite making no sense, and any scene set in Ziggy's Hofbrau would do.
