1992 is two, two, two movies in one… and they don’t play well together. It wants to be a serious film about surviving the Rodney King riots in LA 1992… while also being a heist film. Too bad it’s more heist than riot.

Specifically it’s about a crew of crooks led by Ray Liotta(!) who take advantage of the riots to knock over a factory. Meanwhile, a father wants to get his son to safety by holing up in that very same factory.

It feels very much like two scripts that someone thought couldn’t exist by themselves. As a depiction of the steam coming off LA pre-verdict and the conflagration of the riots, it’s quite nerve-wracking. But it also wants to have its heist and its pew pew shootouts too. The heist only exists because the police are otherwise engaged, so there’s a slight ick factor of using a race riot to cover for more high-falutin lootin’.

Most of the movie is the heist anyway and it’s not exactly a bad one of these, though it gets majorly bogged down in a 3rd act cat-and-mouse game. It ends well enough with a shootout but I also felt a little let down there was nothing more to it than that.

Ray Liotta is fine it, dropping F bombs like he owns the place. It’s probably his actual final movie (sorry Cocaine Bear) and he goes out as the same low-life hood that he built his career on. So good for him, I suppose… but it’s a shame he never got his dramatic swan song.

Tyrese Gibson and Scott Eastwood round out a crew that’s doing their level best to try to elevate a pretty by-the-numbers crime thriller. Gibson is quite stoic and menacing just being there… and I spent the rest of the time wondering why Scott doesn’t have his dad’s gravitas.

This film is a pretty good film about race riots and a decent-sh heist flick. If the heist flick didn’t bog down and/or try to be anything more than it is, maybe I’ve have enjoyed both sides of the film equally. As is, it’s an okish film at odds with itself.

Score: 74