Classified has Eckhart as a CIA lifer, an assassin who learns about his new jobs through coded language in classified ads in local newspapers--which is nice that someone has found a use for newspapers and classified ads in the age of the internet. Anyway, a mysterious young woman (Abigail Breslin) informs him that the whole thing is a sham, and when he looks into it, he realizes this may actually be the case. Could the death of his friend and director, Tim Roth, also be a sham? Now it's up to Eckhart and Breslin to travel around to as many beautiful locations in the Mediterranean as they can to try to get to the bottom of this thing. Will he find out before the net closes in on him?
This isn't horrible, but at a running time of 105 minutes, it's a little long, and that extended time exposes flaws that would've been forgiven at 80 minutes. The tone is a little uneven. There's one point where it seemed like Breslin's character was developing feelings for Eckhart, but later we learn she's his daughter, and she knew that, so the tone of those earlier scenes was awkward, knowing now that that wasn't what the film intended them to be. We also have moments were she's hanging out at the safe house doing goofy exercise things to kill the time, which makes us think the movie is more lighthearted, but then we have serious killings and death. So what then does this movie have to hang its hat on? Eckhart? Sure, but he's doing a bunch of these former CIA agent movie things, so does this one standout, or just look like another one of those? Tim Roth has a few scenes, but what does that get me? And then it was directed by Roel Reine, which does give the thing a polish that helps, but this ain't no Pistol Whipped or even Hard Target 2. Ultimately that's where we're left, this isn't horrible, and I think if you're an Eckhart fan it's worth a watch.
Speaking of Mr. Eckhart, this is now three movies of his we've reviewed, and he played some kind of ex-CIA or CIA veteran in all of them. I haven't seen The Bricklayer yet--that's clocking in at close to two hours, so I'll probably pass, though I saw it's leaving Netflix on October 2nd, so I may want to make it happen just in case! It's an interesting niche to fall into, the grizzled ex-CIA guy, you can make his movies anywhere, he looks great in a suit with no tie reading the paper at a fancy European café, and then it's just a matter of making the action bits believable enough, which we can do now through the power of editing. I saw his next Jesse V. Johnson collaboration won't have him as an ex-CIA guy, but I'm holding out hope that there will be some kind of twist where it's revealed that he led some kind of secret double life. A guy can dream, right? As far as this movie goes, it's the Eckhart you want, and I think for a 105-minute Hulu actioner, that's all you can ask for.
This actually isn't our first time seeing Tim Roth on the site, if you remember we covered The Incredible Hulk for a Wild Card post back when I did those. He's not in this much, and when he is, it was hard to get a shot of him sans reverse shot from the actor he was speaking with, so I finally gave up and just grabbed this one, even if it wasn't the best. Modern filmmakers, especially DTV ones, should help out us reviewers. If you know you only have the name in the film for a day's worth of shooting, make sure you get one or two clean headshot moments for us. I'm not going to say that explains why this movie only has 11 critic reviews on IMDb (12 now if you count mine), but it doesn't help, right? Again, that low number of critic reviews speaks to how this movie didn't have much to hang its hat on in a sea of Eckhart grizzled ex-CIA options out there, and the one thing it was supposed to have, Roth, doesn't have enough of him for it to work as a hang your hat on kind of thing. They were close though when we had the scene with Roth in a full-zip hoodie eating at a fancy restaurant with Eckhart. A touch more of that energy would've made all the difference.
We're finally tagging director Roel Reine on the site, which makes this his seventh film. Out of all the ones we've reviewed, I'd say Pistol Whipped is my favorite, one I put in my top 10 DTV films of the oughts, and probably one that would make a top ten of the 2000s so far for me. This doesn't come close to those heights, but as I looked through the rest of his films we've covered so far, this might be my third-favorite, after Hard Target 2. I don't know what that says about him or his films, I think maybe more he's a higher-end gun for hire, and can put a level of polish on something that otherwise would be unremarkable, which is an important skill in the modern DTV ecosystem. The other thing I noticed is he often acts as his own DP, which, I don't know enough about how directing works at this level, but because it doesn't seem to happen that often, it must not be that easy to do. Maybe like a drummer being a lead singer, it's rare, and when it did happen with Karen Carpenter, they were like "sorry, you can't be a drummer anymore." Don't you remember you told Roel Reine you loved him, baby? Rainy days and Mondays do get him down, don't they? Okay, I'll stop.
Finally, I want to finish by going back to the newspaper. I'm from that age where we remember when the newspaper was a big deal, and were also part of the transition population that expected to be able to find every story online while our parents were still getting the paper delivered. I'm sure everyone else who's around my age also had to have the conversation with our parents when we were looking for a job, that newspaper classified ads and "hitting the pavement" aren't how it works anymore. How can that be? No, it made more sense to them that we were just being lazy and not wanting to find a job, than that we could actually go on that computer box thing and apply to a job and send them our resume through that--and that they actually preferred that to us just showing up. I was also one of the first people I knew who worked from home, starting back in the fall of 2013, and that totally blew their minds. The fact that this movie, released in 2024, was using classified ads in newspapers--physical newspapers no less--was a blast from the past. Maybe that was the thing they should've hung their hat on more. All the things physical newspapers can do that digital ones can't. Like when you're moving, you can't wrap your fragile stuff in a digital version of a newspaper, can you? What about putting Silly Putty on a newspaper to show how the print comes off on it, try doing that with your computer screen, right? And God forbid you find yourself in prison, you can't turn the digital version of a newspaper into a deadly weapon like you can the print one. The thing is though, out of all of those things, the one thing you could do with the digital version is read the classifieds and decipher any codes in them.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu here in the States, but if you cancelled your Hulu subscription recently, this wouldn't be the reason to get it back. And also check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, 218 in the archives, "Eckhart on the Skids(?)"
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27714840
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