‘The Last Days of American Crime’ review: Idiotic Netflix torture porn earns rare 0% rating
“I need something bad and fast,” criminal Graham Bricke says to a weapons dealer early in “The Last Days of American Crime.”
The Netflix action film definitely fulfills one of those criteria: It is so, so bad — but it is ever eye-gougingly slow.
What makes this movie, which stars Edgar Ramírez as Bricke, so interminable that it boasts a rare 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes? Is it the scene in which a man shoots up a captive woman full of heroin and attempts to rape her in what looks like Austin Powers’ bedroom? Or maybe the sequence where a disgusting man with no flesh burns a tied-up Bricke with a cigar in a trailer, sets it on fire and Ramírez still escapes looking like he’s en route to a photo shoot?
How about the strong, but totally wasted premise? The US government is about to unleash a mind-controlling signal that will sense when a person is up to no good and stop ’em in their tracks. Before the day it’s switched on, a few bad guys plan on stealing $1 billion from the government.
That team of rogues is Bricke, Shelby Dupree (Anna Brewster), an MIT-educated hacker and Kevin Cash (Michael Pitt), a gangster doofus. The trio’s bland guy, smart gal, dumb schlub dynamic mirrors that of “Harry Potter,” only it’s missing the magic in more ways than one.
The dopey dialogue could be to blame. A criminal (just assume everyone here is a criminal) offers Bricke some hospitality at his home. “Want something to drink? Some cocaine? We’ve got some great cocaine!” Great cocaine? A brooding opening narration lets us know what we’re in for: “I went to five stations before I found one still selling diesel,” says Bricke. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Why did that stupid motherf - - ker go to all that trouble to find diesel?”
No. This stupid motherf - - ker was thinking, “Two and a half more hours?!”
![Edgar Ramírez as Graham Bricke in “Last Days Of American Crime”](https://vip.nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/american-crimes-54.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=662)
Don’t care about story, characters or words, but love violence? Even you will be disappointed. Director Olivier Megaton lacks Quentin Tarantino and Brian De Palma’s panache when it comes to blood, and doesn’t have a teaspoon of Ridley Scott and George Miller’s creativity in imagining decrepit dystopian cities. Megaton’s variety of social collapse is that of flaming garbage cans and topless women dancing on cars. For all we know, it could’ve been Mardi Gras.
Because of the mindless visuals, and action sequences that make you miss Michael Bay in a “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” way, the promising plot is lost to a series of interconnected torture porn scenes that abase women and suggest that Ramírez is too handsome to suffer a broken nose despite being repeatedly punched in the face.
Netflix has certainly set itself apart from its competitors by offering something for everyone — from a prestige drama about the British royal family to a reboot of “The Magic School Bus” — but they’ve taken this mantra to worrying extremes. The company shouts “all are welcome!” to these dismal films (“Murder Mystery” with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, “The Laundromat,” “Bird Box”) like they’e a church rather than a membership service with some taste.
It’s time for the granddaddy of streaming to bring out the velvet rope. “The Irishman,” you’re in! “The Last Days of American Crime,” you’re out.