Blown Away - 1994

Holy Shit. Shit is capitalized here on purpose. The 90's man, the fuckin 90s amiright? I sandwiched this film into my recent exploits of 1940s dramas and comedies. I also watched Gone With The Wind... I'd give it 2.5 stars.

I'm hungover and/or maybe still drunk from last night, I'm heading off to work, but I wanted to at least start on Blown Away review. Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones star in this ridiculous should-be-cult-classic.

It's adrenaline from minute one with Jeff Bridges as a bomb defuser who works in LA or NY or somewhere like that. He is the best in the biz, obviously, but he'll put his skills to the test when Tommy Lee Jones breaks out of prison in the first few minutes, constructing a toilet bomb and blowing away the wall of his cell. If that's an indication of how this movie is going to go, you're in for a real fucking treat. And you know what? It is. A fucking treat.

This movie was awesome. It was epic. First of all, the acting is so bad-it's-good as Tommy hams it up AND tries for an Irish accent. Then, Jeff Bridges is solid and brings huge gravitas to a pretty thinly written character. He leaks occasional accent work in, as his dad Lloyd Bridges plays a giant stereotype Irish weirdo. There's also about 6-8 massive explosions or explosion oriented scenes in the film, for the bloodhound in ya that wants to see actual explosion work from the 90s when it wasn't fuckin CGI.

Besides the awesome explosions, there's a Bushmills slammin TLJones and Bridges, there's Forest Whittaker as a tricky, intelligent other bomb expert, and then there's Jeff Bridges wife, also thrown into the plot. It keeps the movie moving super quick, and it's a fuckin thrillride to watch. They had special cameras and sometimes take them inside the mechanisms of the bombs, which is really fun and innovative. It makes it very clear that danger is around every corner, and even though there's not a single scene where Jones is making or preparing a bomb, they nonetheless appear all over the fuckin city.

This movie kicked ass. It reminded me of those fun 90s flicks I love like Independence Day, and it wore it's 90s-ness on it's sleeve. I give it 5 stars.