Tonight's Movies: "Unthinkable" and "What Doesn't Kill You"

I watched two more movies tonight from the batch my cousin gave me a couple of weeks ago.

What Doesn't Kill You (2008)

Above, Ethan Hawke, Brian Goodman and Mark Ruffalo.

The first one was What Doesn't Kill You with Mark Ruffalo as Brian Reilly, Ethan Hawke as Paulie McDougan, Amanda Peet as Stacy Reilly, Will Lyman as Sully and Brian Goodman as Pat Kelly. Goodman also directed and co-wrote the script along with Paul T. Murray. I remember Goodman as the military dad in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift.

The plot involves two childhood friends from the South Boston area (there's a lot of snow in this movie) who work for a local crime boss to make a living. It is based on a true story.

I thought the movie was handled well and the acting top-notch.

My grade: A.

Unthinkable (2010)

Above, Michael Sheen and Samuel L. Jackson.

The second movie I watched tonight was a 2010 thriller called Unthinkable.

In this movie, Steven Younger, an American Islamic terrorist, is threatening to nuke three U.S. cities unless his demands are met.

The movie stars Samuel L. Jackson as Henry Herald 'H' Humphries, Carrie-Anne Moss as FBI Agent Helen Brody, Michael Sheen as Steven Arthur Younger, Stephen Root as Charlie Thompson and Lora Kojovic as Rina Humphries. It was directed by Gregor Jordan and written by Peter Woodward. Ex-Superman Brandon Routh has a small role as an FBI agent.

Jackson plays a black ops interrogator who uses extreme methods of torture to try to force Younger to disclose the locations of the nuclear bombs. The movie primarily deals with the moral conflicts involving torture and the saving of millions of lives.

Jackson begins his interrogation by walking into the torture room with a hatchet. The scene should have been a gross-out and shocking, but it made me laugh as Jackson just approached Sheen and just started chopping (as in "chop-chop-chop") off Sheen's fingertips.

Unfortunately, while the cast was good (with the exception of Sheen, who wasn't sleazy enough and his "tortured" acting laughable), this movie falls short of being the spellbinder it could and should have been. No wonder this was a direct-to-dvd movie. The "looker" in the movie was Lora Kojovic, too bad she wasn't given more to do.

My grade: B.

Of the two movies, What Doesn't Kill You was definitely the better feature.