30 Minutes or Less

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

This films release has been delayed and delayed in Australia. I had been looking up release dates for it since mid last year and found out it's apparently because of some real life bombing incident in the country where a girl had a bomb strapped to her. Unfortunately during my research I also found out that there was another real life event except the poor guy actually exploded.

Knowing that really tainted this entire film. It made laughing at it feel wrong. The filmmakers claimed to have no knowledge of the incident but the entire set up plays out the same, so I presume the writers did.

I like Jesse Eisenberg. He isn't required to do that much here but I still like him in the role. Michael Peña has managed to make another classic Observe and Report-esque character for himself. It's kind of strange that the film spends almost a s much time giving funny scenes to the villains as to the good guys. Danny McBride and Nick Swardson have some funny stuff together and you never get the feeling that you want to see them killed or hurt, despite what they are doing.

This film feels like a fun little interlude for Ruben Fleischer, hopefully before making a sequel to his debut Zombieland. The film has quite a pace to it and manages to keep upping the stakes but building the laughs throughout the running time.

Despite the knowledge of the real life incident, I really did enjoy the film. It's the first straight comedy film I've seen this year too which makes it a nice change of pace.