I'm embarrassed to admit, I checked AP13 out at the library . . .

. . . to have something on in the background while I tackled my stove and refrigerator with Orange Glo. I figured, well this will be 90% gunfire, 5% good casting, and 5% good writing: I won't need to actually watch it, it will follow the formula of every other action film I've done my ironing by. It's the story, the story, the STORY, right? Well this story was so damn good I threw my rubber gloves off, grabbed a beer, and left my stove for another day.

I'm not going to post spoilers, but let me say this: The unspoken star of this movie was the weather. You are dropped in the middle of a vicious blizzard in Detroit, Michigan. It gets worse from there.

I don't much care for Ethan Hawke as an actor but he was superb in this film, and I realized that I like him when he isn't pretending to be either clever or serious. He'll die still looking like he's 21, and while that may be an asset for women, it's a career liability for male actors (imho).

Twice every year I pull out Coppola's Apocalypse Now, with Laurence Fishburne cast as just another skinny kid sacrificed to American hubris (Vietnam). Hey. At some point Fishburne put on some meat, filled out, and became the Dead Sexy crime boss you'll see in this film. He has always had talent, but in this film Laurence Fishburne is a Giant presence, cooling Hawke's borderline ADD/hysteria. Like a dormant volcano, daily being pestered by puny bipeds with digital cameras, Fishburne as "The Bishop" is a controlled explosion.

A really great story.