The Critically Hated Movie That's Crushing It On Netflix
"Another insipidly sleazy, lizard-brain shoot-'em-up that through its very dullness demonstrates how rote such ghastly fare has become in our culture." "Instantly forgettable tough-guy fantasia." "Not good." These are just a few selected lines from reviews of the critically despised The Last Days of American Crime, the motion picture which, as of June 8th, 2020, was reportedly Netflix's most-watched available offering.
The Last Days of American Crime, which released directly to Netflix on June 5th, is a lot of things: an action movie, a comic book adaptation, and, to the dismay of critics, one hundred and forty nine minutes long. More than that, it's one of the few, proud members of an elite cinematic club: it has a stunning 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, placing it in the same company as distinguished motion pictures like Jaws: The Revenge and that Pinocchio where a middle-aged Roberto Benigni played the main character.
There's good news and bad news
The premise is simple: America, finally fed to the gills with all this "crime" malarkey, develops a broadcast-able signal which will disable its citizen's ability to knowingly break the law. You know, that old chestnut.
The Last Days of American Crime is directed by (deep sigh) Olivier Megaton, the mind behind two Taken movies, Transporter 3, and that Hitman adaptation from 2007 that almost convinced us not to care about Timothy Olyphant. Its cast is a who's-who of solid indie actors who've been recently abandoned by Hollywood like unwanted cats — Michael Pitt of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Funny Games appears, along with Shalto Copley, the breakout star of District 9 who largely disappeared after The A-Team reboot failed to land.
At nearly two and a half hours long and a 23% audience approval rating, The Last Days of American Crime might seem like a stretch in terms of the mass-watchability necessary to put it over the top. That said, Netflix now considers any two-minute watching period as a "view," so it's not like the bar is set too high.