Stretch (2014)
Directed by Joe Carnahan
A hard-luck limo driver struggling to go straight and pay off a debt to his bookie takes on a job with a crazed passenger whose sought-after ledger implicates some seriously dangerous criminals.
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What critics compared Stretch to
Still, it’s 2014, and now you’re making a hyperactive variation on Collateral: down-on-his luck chauffeur wanders into the night and witnesses seedy things, from Mexican/Russian organized crime to luchador minis running out of an orgy.
In what is almost an evil twin to Michael Mann’s Collateral, Stretch soon finds himself under pressure to meet his passenger’s increasingly bizarre demands, culminating in the centrepiece of the film: a race against time to pick up a large amount of drugs and money for an orgy.
It’s at the introduction of Karos, which the parallels between Stretch and Collateral become blinding.
Then there’s also the Joe Carnahan responsible for the deliriously gonzo "Smokin’ Aces" and similarly unhinged "The A-Team" (another would-be franchise starter that ultimately went nowhere).
Coming from the man who gave us “Smokin’ Aces” that says plenty.
Didn’t you get tired from over-exerting yourself with Smokin’ Aces, The A-Team, and Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane?
Though it finds him working on a much smaller budget than on his previous big-screen ventures (not a bad thing, given how visually grounded this flick feels as compared to the more fantastical A-Team), Stretch also completes Carnahan’s informal trilogy of adrenaline-rush thrillers, following Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane and Smokin’ Aces.
Will Carnahan use genre to wax (relatively) philosophical, as he did with Narc and The Grey, or will he indulge in the glib, fast-paced, alpha-dog douchebaggery of Smokin’ Aces and The A-Team? Carnahan’s coke-fueled action-comedy Stretch falls decisively in the latter category, which is unfortunately the one where the director confuses confidence and bravado for wit and fun.
Outside of The Grey and a suite of unrealized projects, the writer-director Joe Carnahan has seemed most at home in the world of live-action cartoons, in which Boss Level , his first directorial effort since Stretch , unquestionably belongs.
Since then, the once-promising director of "Narc" has released only one other movie, 2014's straight-to-streaming "Stretch" (a movie that largely survives on the back of Chris Pine).