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Bus 657
Directed by Scott Mann, with Robert De Niro, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Dave Bautista, Kate Bosworth, Gina Carano, Morris Chesnut and Mark-Paul Gosselaar.
REVIEW: Frank Schek
ROBERT De Niro is the sun around which the talented supporting players orbit in Scott Mann’s crime drama that mainly serves to jog memories of a far better De Niro crime drama also directed by someone named “Mann”, namely Michael Mann’s Heat.
Continuing the actor’s late-career propensity for appearing in questionable vehicles, Bus 657 nonetheless has a B-movie appeal thanks to its strong ensemble and wacky commitment to its overcomplicated, wildly absurd plotting. If double features still existed, this would make the perfect bottom half.
Although De Niro provides the marquee value, it’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan, displaying his typical world-weary charisma and sporting the extreme facial stubble of which he’s become increasingly fond, who plays the lead role of Vaughn, an employee at a riverboat casino run with an iron hand by a gangster named Pope (De Niro).
When Vaughn asks his boss for a $300 000 loan to pay for his dying little girl’s lifesaving operation – yes, it’s that kind of movie – he’s rudely rebuffed and violently sent packing by Pope’s vicious enforcer Dog (Morris Chestnut). So he decides to take up his hulking co-worker Cox’s (Dave Bautista, Guardian of the Galaxy and Spectre) offer of joining an inside-job robbery.
Needless to say, the plan goes awry, with Vaughn and his criminal cohorts (including one played by co-screenwriter Stephen Cyrus Sepher) having to hijack a city bus to make their escape. They’re hotly pursued by the police – including sympathetic detective Kris (Gina Carano, Haywire), who defies direct orders by letting them get past a roadblock – as well as Pope and his minions, eager to get the gang because the stolen $3 million is illegal laundered money. On the bus, Vaughn proves himself the voice of sanity, placating the passengers and trying to keep Cox under control before violence breaks out.
Even as the film threatens to turn into a slower-paced variation on Speed, it throws in enough twists and turns to make one’s head spin, with several characters and situations not as they first appear. Whether or not you’ll buy the ridiculous dialogue and plot contrivances depends on your willingness to suspend disbelief on such details as a hospital being willing to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash minutes before an operation.
But under Mann’s efficient direction, the pace never lags long enough to dwell on such matters. And when things do slow down, it’s mainly so De Niro can provide some much-needed depth to his character, most notably in an emotionally tense reunion between Pope and his estranged daughter (Kate Bosworth). And later, when Pope and Vaughn have their fateful final encounter, the veteran actor delivers enough subtle grace notes to remind you that he’s worth all the money he gets. – Reuters/Hollywood Reporter