Tyrese Gibson leads a somewhat tense action-drama set against the backdrop of the L.A. riots.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Featuring the final performance of Ray Liotta, who died in 2022, “1992” wraps the real-life Los Angeles riots in the wake of the Rodney King ruling around a “Die-Hard”-like action-movie plot with Tyrese Gibson’s charismatic ex-convict Mercer Bey standing in for Bruce Willis’s John McClane.
What’s most impressive about the film is how it successfully merges a Blaxpoitation-resonant plot and setting with a genuine historical event that, 30 years later, helped birth the Black Lives Matter movement. Mercer’s greatest concern is keeping his rebellious son alive, first in the mean streets of L.A. and then in the middle of a bloody heist at his place of business.
Working on a modest budget and shot in Bulgaria with repeated establishing shots of Echo Park and a burning Los Angeles, director Ariel Vromen (“The Iceman,” also with Liotta) establishes a genuine L.A. ready to explode, especially in the ‘hood, where Mercer, a maintenance worker at Pluton Metals, lives with his high-school-student son Antoine (Christopher Ammaunel). The riots feature a Black man in the street waving a burning American flag. The turmoil inspires Riggin (Scott Eastwood), whose heist was put on hold by his father (Liotta), to use the fighting and looting in the streets as a giant diversion while he and his crew, including his nervous younger brother Dennis (Dylan Arnold) and the too-obviously-flagged-brother-to-die Copeland (Cle Bennett), to rob Pluton of $10 million worth of platinum used to manufacture catalytic converters. Of course, Riggin must let his career criminal father Lowell in the deal, and Lowell brings his own muscle: a bruiser named Titus (Oleg Taktarov) and a sadist not very credibly named Murphy (Israeli Ori Pfeffer). The vault where the platinum is kept is right out in the open in the middle of a large space at the company, and we are told that it has a giant metal box suspended above it, which can be lowered by an alarm switch inside security.
Well, I guess we’re going to see this happen, right? After shooting the head security guard, Riggin and Lowell arrange their big tools and powerful blowtorches to break into the vault. At this point, “1992” borrows a few steps and images from Michael Mann’s landmark crime drama “Thief” (1981) with a signature James Caan performance. But it does not achieve the same poetic power. Liotta is totally in his element as the trigger-happy OG, shooting people and shouting orders. Eastwood and Arnold are forced to surrender the spotlight to Liotta. I mean, after all, this guy was in “GoodFellas” (1990).
When Mercer and Antoine arrive looking for shelter from the storm, they run smack into Titus and Murphy, and Mercer must unleash some of his John McClane-like fighting and shooting abilities to keep him and his son alive. The different father-son conflicts in the film definitely give “1992” more gravitas than your average B-movie. Mercer tells Antoine about the 1965 Watts uprising he lived through as an adolescent. However, the screenplay by Sascha Penn (“Creed II”) and Vromen does not make the big leap to great drama. Still, Gibson, best known for the “Fast & Furious” and “Transformers” franchises, has grown impressively as an actor, and he and Liotta have a satisfying standoff as the film’s deeply flawed paterfamilias. A final chase leads to a neat Oedipal twist. But “1992” is at its best when it reminds us just how relevant those Blaxploitation films always were.
‘1992’
Rating: R for violence and pervasive language.
Cast: Tyrese Gibson, Ray Liotta, Scott Eastwood, Dylan Arnold
Director: Ariel Vromen
Writer: Sascha Penn, Vromen
Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and other suburban theaters
Grade: B
Boston Movie News 