So I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the end of the season, and after we heard a bunch of the talk from the Yohe/Rossi/Madden hot take crowd about the supposed fact that this team is fundamentally flawed, has something wrong with the room, needs to be completely rebuilt, etc. “I know what’s coming this summer” horseshit aside, it’s really been bugging me to think about what these people really expect a rebuild to look like. So, since it’s the offseason and there’s nothing else to do, I figured I’d put on my amateur talent scout/horrible GM prediction skills and analyze what, exactly, the Pens could do, and what they’re likely to do in the offseason. Keep in mind that I’m literally nobody and have no inside information beyond what’s public and I have no credentials on this front either, but I’m also completely an expert and fuck you if you disagree with any of my opinions. I’ll break this down into tiers from most likely to be with the team next season to the UFAs who are almost certainly gone.
Tier One: The Stars
Sid – Goes without saying… right? I mean, maybe not – maybe you blame Sid for the lack of leadership on the team, or you think he’s contributing to an environment that is no longer conducive to winning. But, does anyone really believe that? Plus, and this is actually more important than that kind of tripe that nobody truly believes – can you even begin to think of a trade that would be for equal value to what Sid is worth to this franchise? That last reason is the biggest reason why none of this tier should – or will – be traded: you can’t possibly get equal value back to what they’re worth. Either the team trading for them would be foolish to do it (they’re still young enough that they’re not on their farewell tours, but they’re old enough that you’d have to be in win-now mode, and none of those teams who would fall under that category are going to give up the kind of assets it would take to make an even trade).
Geno – Geno started Game One like a wrecking ball and I was convinced that his line would end up being the turning point in that series. Boy was I right – but also wrong. Instead of dominating the Habs’ lack of depth, they looked listless at times and like they just never got back in sync. That’s led to the yearly talk about trading Geno and Letang, but frankly, JR has already committed to both and you’d never get equal value for Geno. He’s worth too much to the franchise and probably will retire a Penguin unless he leaves as a UFA.
Letang – GMJR has already committed to him so he’s not being traded in all likelihood, and there’s really no trade package that would bring back equal value for what he’s worth to the team. He plays 25 minutes a night, and even though he makes infuriating turnovers at times, they’re usually because he’s trying to be creative and doing something physically gifted that we, as fans, take for granted – even when he fails at it. Do yourself a favor and watch the tape – when there’s a breakout pass out of the defensive zone, watch when Letang fires the pass and then watch when Jack Johnson or even Marcus Pettersson throws the pass and see the difference. Letang makes this offense tick, even when that offense sucks and doesn’t put up any goals against a trash tier team like Montreal. He’s not going anywhere, like his hair or not.
Tier Two: Not Quite Stars, but basically untouchable
John Marino – I’ll eat… something if they trade Marino.
Jake Guentzel – I struggled a bit trying to figure out where to put Jake on this list. The thing is, like it or not, he was Not Good in that series against Montreal. Still, give him a pass because he was coming off of a long term injury that I’ve had and can personally attest to the fact it sucks and takes a while to recover from.
Tristan Jarry – I mean, I’d say he’s PROBABLY in this tier, but who knows; maybe GMJR gets a sick trade package for him and keeps Murray instead. I find that REALLY hard to believe, so I’m keeping him here, but I’d allow for the possibility.
Tier Three: We literally just signed these guys, so why the hell would you trade them?
Brandon Tanev – So his contract still seems a little too long and for a little too much money, but after watching him basically be the only dude on the ice skating hard for long periods of that Montreal series, I can’t imagine trading him even if you could. There’s probably a market for him somewhere if you want to retain salary, but that would be taking a big L on someone who arguably does help the team, so I don’t see it happening.
Jason Zucker – So, Zucker wasn’t nearly the impact player we were hoping to get after he scored a billion goals with Sid after acquiring him, but then again, who was? He’s with the team fairly long term, and while his acquisition price is a sunk cost, it still seems stupid as hell to trade him away at this point. He’s a useful top six forward, even if he’s not a top liner.
Tier Four: Entry Level Contracts/Very Inexpensive Contracts That Make Little Sense to Move
Dominik Simon – Simon is a possession demon, and even if his hands seem like they’re as bad as mine playing beer league sometimes, he’s a valuable part of the team and he costs 750k. I can’t see him getting traded.
Sam Lafferty – He’s still on his ELC and even though he was shit in the one game he got in the playoffs, the coaching staff and JR think highly enough of him to at least try to play him in a playoff game. I doubt he’s going anywhere.
Teddy Blueger – He’s a useful defensive forward making very little money. If you don’t end up needing him for your roster, you probably lose him on waivers, but I doubt trading him is terribly likely. He’s probably still in the bottom six next season.
Chad Ruhwedel – He makes pocket change and seems to be fairly useful #8 defenseman. He’s cleared waivers in the past and probably would in the future again.
Tier Five: I wouldn’t trade them, but GMJR might if he loses a bunch of money at Rivers Casino and wants to shake shit up
Brian Dumoulin – I’m prefacing this with the fact that I really like Dumoulin, and I do value advanced and/or fancy stats so I know he’s not the problem. But, he’s not nearly as untouchable as any of the guys above, and he’s someone with a tradeable contract who could probably fetch some assets back in return. I know absolutely nothing about the locker room culture and I don’t pretend to know anything about it, but if Dumoulin is anything but a model citizen in the room, I could see him getting moved. Still, I wouldn’t do it.
Bryan Rust – Rust seems to be a pretty standard GMJR whipping boy, and I don’t understand it at all. His advanced metrics are pretty amazing and he added the goal scoring touch this year to round out his overall game. If he’s on almost any other team, he’s probably one of their focal point stars but he gets buried a bit here given how talented the lineup is. Still, would anybody be surprised if GMJR goes on a bender and decides to move him?
Tier Six: Trade Possibilities, but what’s the point?
Marcus Pettersson – I know what you’re thinking here – he wasn’t the problem, and I agree. But, he has rather middling advanced metrics, and if I’m being honest, I am not excited to start paying him 4 million next season. Still, of this tier, he’s the least likely to go because… we’re paying him 4 million next year. But he’s very, very far from untouchable and nor should he be untouchable. His pairing was largely buoyed by stellar play from Marino and I’m not sure he’d have been remarkable at all without being tethered to that rocket. Still, with the contract… probably not going anywhere.
Zach Aston-Reese – ZAR was at fault for some pretty bad goals against during the Montreal series, and of that buzzsaw fourth line, he’s probably the most tradeable and replaceable. You could likely get value for him, since he’s only making $1m for another year. I probably would keep him, though.
Jared McCann – He’s probably going to be at least tendered as an RFA because he’s too valuable to let walk without getting anything in return, but the fact that he was the first guy on the bench when things started to go south doesn’t bode well for him – neither does the fact that he was on the single worst line during that shit show of a series. For a while, he looked like one of the future stars of the team as he was riding with Sid, but when he’s been separated from the gravy train, he hasn’t been as productive or looked nearly as irreplaceable. Could you get some value out of him by moving him? Maybe. Maybe not.
Tier Seven: Please God someone take these guys
Nick Bjugstad – He’s not totally useless, but he’s on a horrible contract that’s already gotten him traded once and he’s currently injured. I think it’s fairly unlikely the Pens will be able to move him unless they retain salary, which… sigh. I guess if you have to. At least he’s only got one more year left on his contract. Speaking of which…
Jack Johnson – 3 more years at $3.25m. If you can trade him, you do it. But you probably have to retain salary and you probably have to package something with him to offload him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still a Penguin next season for that reason.
Tier Eight: More Likely Trade Candidates
Patrick Hornqvist – Horny has had a great career with the Pens, is by all accounts a great locker room dude and a good powerplay guy, and is completely useless at fives. I think you could get some value from trading him to a team who’s in GMJR’s Tom Wilson Fever Dreams Mode (NEED MORE GRIT). I wouldn’t be happy to see him go at all based on what he’s provided over the years, but I would understand and I actually do think it’s time.
Matt Murray – A lot of blame has always been heaped on Murray because he’s the guy who took over for the guy a lot of us liked. I personally don’t buy the exorbitant contract demands talk, but who knows. The bottom line, though, is that his metrics have been suffering for a few seasons now and for better or worse, it doesn’t make much sense to keep both goaltenders and he doesn’t save enough of the highest danger shots. Should he have to? No. But he isn’t really stealing games for us at this point and Jarry sometimes does. There are enough horrible goalie situations in the league that you should be able to trade him somewhere, but I wouldn’t expect to extract a ton of value out of the trade. Hopefully I’ll be pleasantly surprised, though.
Tier Nine: RFA Non-Tender Candidates
Evan Rodrigues – He didn’t really flash when he got a chance, even if that wasn’t much of a chance. He’d be cheap to keep in all likelihood but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him non-tendered.
Jusso Riikola – I kinda doubt you can find much better than him at that price point and I can’t imagine him fetching more than league minimum to be honest. Still, it’s possible GMJR has had enough of the Riikola experiment and is ready to move on. I’d probably keep him, for what it’s worth, but the staff started Jack Johnson over him for four games in the playoffs. Clearly they don’t think terribly highly of him.
Tier Ten: UFA’s
Justin Schultz – And now… starting for your Washington Capitals… Seriously though, JR threw him solidly under the bus and I can’t see him sticking around. And also seriously, I bet he signs with the Caps.
Conor Sheary – They literally just traded for him again, which shows they think he has some value, so it’s possible they throw him a reasonable contract offer. It’s even possible that he decides to stick around. Let me be clear: I actually really liked his game in the playoff series and I say that unironically. He was buzzing a lot, made some creative passes, and was in the right spot pretty often. Still, they lost, and he didn’t score, so he’s an obvious candidate to move on from.
Patrick Marleau – Press F to pay respects.
Conclusions:
So, what’s left? What does a real “rebuild” look like for this team that’s already fairly tight to the cap? Let’s say they move on from everyone I listed in tiers 8-10… your starting lineup looks like this (I have no idea what wings people play so I’m making this up and I fully admit that – this is just an exercise to show you that not much changes, spoiler alert):
Guentzel – Sid – Simon
Zucker – Geno – Rust
X – McCann – X
Tanev – Blueger – ZAR
Letang – Dumo
Marino – Pettersson
Johnson – X
Jarry
X
Extras: Bjugstad, Lafferty, Ruhwedel
Cue “Is This Rebuilding?” meme – even if we started dipping into the less-likely-to-be-traded tiers, this roster really doesn’t feel like it’s being changed much, unless GMJR panics and decides to turn this into Grit City™ again. My prediction is that we don’t see a lot of turnover this season – maybe a few trades here and there, but this roster is mostly the same on opening night in December or January or whenever.
What do you guys think?

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:
1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999 • 2000

1-1-2001	1-8-2001	1-15-2001	1-22-2001
1-29-2001	2-5-2001	2-12-2001	2-19-2001
2-26-2001	3-5-2001	3-12-2001	3-19-2001
3-26-2001	4-2-2001	4-9-2001	4-16-2001
4-23-2001	4-30-2001	5-7-2001	5-14-2001
5-21-2001	5-28-2001	6-4-2001	6-11-2001
6-18-2001	6-25-2001	7-2-2001	7-9-2001
7-16-2001	7-23-2001

PROGRAMMING NOTE: There will be no Observer Rewind on Friday, because I expect to be recovering from a July 4th, 'Merica-induced hangover. Presuming I still have fingers left, we'll pick back up Monday.

• The Invasion PPV is in the books and appears to have been a major success. As a show, it was nothing special. One great match, a good main event, and everything else was the usual decent, average, bad, forgettable undercard. Early signs are that this show probably did big numbers on PPV (yeah, that's putting it mildly). It ended with Austin turning heel again, after seemingly turning babyface just a week or two ago, and defecting to the WCW/ECW side. Dave talks about how Austin's brief face-turn seemed to reignite business. Raw ratings were the highest they'd been in 3 months, ticket sales for Invasion saw a major boost following the Raw angle with him, etc. Austin's heel turn at Wrestlemania led to an almost instant downturn in TV ratings and attendance so Dave seems kinda befuddled why they decided to do it again at Invasion, considering last week's babyface turn showed instant signs of improving business. Austin also worked the PPV with 3 broken bones in his back and 2 broken bones in his hand (suffered at King of the Ring). He has breaks in the L-2, L-3, and L-4 vertebraes in his back, but he gutted out the match anyway. Chris Jericho worked the show with a hyper-extended elbow and Kurt Angle has whiplash and a black eye.

WATCH: Steve Austin turns on WWF and joins the Alliance

• They were literally still constructing the stage during the show. During the Heat pre-show match, you could see crew members sawing plywood and hammering stuff to form the left side of the "V" ramp. Chavo Guerrero had to come down the "WWF" side of the ramp because the WCW/ECW side wasn't finished yet. WWF usually books an arena 2 days in advance to do all the setup necessary, but a WNBA game was booked the night before and it went long (due to an N'Sync album release party after the game) and the WWF crew wasn't able to get into the arena and start constructing stuff until the morning of the show.
  
• Other notes from the PPV: Rob Van Dam and Jeff Hardy stole the show, with RVD winning the hardcore title from Jeff. Dave gives it 4 stars. Speaking of titles, if they aren't going to run 2 separate companies, they desperately need to get rid of some of the belts because with all the WCW titles, it has practically doubled the number of champions. X-Pac was booed even though he was a WWF guy and they're supposed to be the babyfaces. And of course, it ended with the Austin turn with him joining the Alliance.
  
• WWF has reached a temporary agreement with the bankruptcy court to be allowed to use the "ECW" name through the end of July. The trustee argued that the ECW intellectual property is owned by the ECW estate they are managing and WWF had been using it without authorization and the court had received complaints from several creditors that ECW owes money too. A couple weeks ago, WWF offered the court $150,000 to buy the ECW trademarks and tape library and were turned down. WWF upped its offer this week to $250,000. In response, the trustee agreed to allow WWF to use the name for now while they figure this out. WWF appears to be the only party interested in purchasing the ECW name and library so it's likely they will make a deal. There's a lot more to this but it's all boring legalese about trademark law and shit like that. Besides, we have a follow up story on this later in this issue....
  
• Last week, Dave had a pretty big obituary for Terry Gordy, but he mentioned that he wasn't able to write a full one by press time. And this week, whew. He's got an exhaustively long obit. But he has more news on it. Gordy died of a heart attack caused by a blood clot in his home. He lived his Freebird gimmick and was a wild partier during his younger days and would get wildly out of control. Dave has stories in here from Michael Hayes and Ted Dibiase about some of Gordy's wild ways. He also tells a story of the Freebirds pissing on somebody and then adds "literally, as the Freebirds in that era were known for giving people they liked--and sometimes didn't like as well--golden showers." Like it was some sort of initiation thing I guess. Well okay then. He also recaps a story about the Freebirds debuting in Memphis and in their very first match on live TV, Michael Hayes shit his pants and had to go backstage during the commercial break to change. There's actually a lot of really funny stories in this obit. But of course, the partying got to be too much and shortly after winning the Triple Crown title in AJPW, Gordy collapsed at a Roppongi night club in Japan from an overdose and his heart stopped beating. He was revived and survived but Giant Baba stripped him of the title and nearly fired him. He managed to keep his job but Baba never fully trusted him again and never again pushed him to the top of the company. In 1993, at the absolute peak of his career (he was making $10,000 a week in Japan and $200,000 a year from WCW), he overdosed again on a flight to Japan and once again fell into a coma. Again, his heart stopped and he had to be revived with CPR. He spent 5 days in a coma and suffered severe brain damage. When he awoke, he was never the same. He had to relearn how to talk, how to walk, and eventually, how to wrestle. He tried to make a comeback, working small indies here and there and even brief runs in ECW and WWF, but the overdose had destroyed his in-ring ability. Despite his success and all the money he made in his career, Gordy died with very little money in the bank and no life insurance. They played "Freebird" at his funeral. Michael Hayes is coming out of retirement next month to take Gordy's place at an indie show that he was booked for before he died. Just 6 days before he passed, Gordy was backstage at the Smackdown tapings and was said to be mentally more clearheaded than anyone had seen him in years and seemed mostly like his old self.
  
• NJPW had their latest Sapporo Dome show and Dave is perplexed by the booking of this company. The show was booked around the idea of NJPW wrestlers facing a bunch of outside wrestlers and MMA fighters, and the NJPW side lost almost all of the matches. Yuji Nagata lost to PRIDE champion Mark Coleman. Former RINGS fighter Masayuki Naruse won the IWGP Jr. title from Minoru Tanaka. Another PRIDE fighrer, Gary Goodridge, beat Manabu Nakanishi, and so on and so forth. The whole thing just made NJPW look weak and this has been going on for months now, with the NJPW guys never getting their wins back and MMA stars basically running roughshod over the company (yeah, we've reached peak Inokism now. This shit damn near killed the company in the early 2000s).
  
• The trustee in the ECW bankruptcy case has hired lawyers to facilitate the sale of the ECW estate to the WWF. Right now, the lawyers have to untangle some stuff, particularly the fact that video game company Acclaim is still making a stink about the fact that they own 15% of ECW and that they should have the rights to it all since Heyman has folded it. But long story short, the lawyers are pretty much just trying to untangle all the legal red tape so that WWF can swoop in and buy it up when they're finished. Heyman's team is still gathering all the records they can and Heyman has to appear before the trustee next week. Heyman himself filed for personal bankruptcy last week, which most people expected. Heyman claimed to have around $2.8 million in personal debt from the filing and is owed $128,000 in back pay for himself (turns out the wrestlers weren't the only ones not getting paid. He wasn't paying himself either). In his filing, Heyman listed the WWF as his current employer, as a television writer, at a salary of $4,000 per month.
  
• NOAH star Kenta Kobayashi has returned from his recent injury and they finally gave him a new name! Since his real name is so similar to one of Japan's biggest stars, he is now going by simply KENTA (and in 6 days, he's going to start kicking heads off in the 2019 G-1).
  
• Bam Bam Bigelow will return to NJPW for the first time since 1992 to work the next tour. He'll be part of the G-1 World tournament, which is basically like the G-1 Climax, but for foreign wrestlers (I can't find any actual details on this tournament so I had to research it by looking up show results. Turns out Bigelow isn't in it after all. Don Frye ends up winning the whole tournament. Scott Norton, Scott Hall, Super J, Giant Silva, and others were also in it).
  
• The elections for the Japanese Diet (their version of Congress basically) will be taking place this week and if you recall, Atsushi Onita is running. Polls indicate that Onita is likely to win, due to his name recognition and certainly not because of his political acumen. Satoru Sayama (the original Tiger Mask) is also running for office but he doesn't have the same mainstream name value and his chances aren't looking as good. But for what it's worth, Sayama has been traveling around his district, with the Tiger Mask on, campaigning for votes. Dave says it's hard enough to trust politicians when you can see their face but he'd never trust one wearing a mask. After all, a vote for La Parka could end up being a vote for DDP!
  
• There's a shoot-fighting show happening in Japan soon, and it's notable because Dos Caras Jr. will be fighting a guy named Kengo Watanabe. Caras Jr. was a top tier amateur wrestler in Mexico and hoped to compete in the 2000 Olympics but it didn't happen. Dave doesn't know if he'll be wearing the mask or not, but if he does, he'll be the first person Dave knows off to compete in an MMA fight while wearing a mask (that would be Alberto Del Rio, and yes he wears the mask. Spoiler: Del Rio wins this fight when Kengo suffers a GNARLY broken arm less than a minute in. They have a rematch in 2002 and Kengo chokes him out to avenge the loss).
  

WATCH: Alberto Del Rio vs. Kengo Watanabe - 2001 shoot fight

• Remember the Atlanta Gold Club strip club that is on trial for a bunch of racketeering charges and alleged connections to the mob? Well, a former dancer named Jana Pelnis testified this week that she performed sexual favors for Eric Bischoff's wife after the couple came to the club and took her to a nearby hotel. Pelnis testified that Bischoff's wife slipped her $200 before they got to the hotel and that the club owner gave her another $800 when she returned. Pelnis also admitted to performing sexual favors for other athletes, such as NBA players Patrick Ewing and Dikembe Mutombo. Eric Bischoff was called to testify the next day and he admitted the story, but also claimed to have been very drunk and said the night in question was a blur. Bischoff said he didn't recall having intercourse with Pelis and said he only recalled his wife and the dancer performing sexual acts on each other while he watched. Bischoff claimed it was a spontaneous thing, not prostitution, and that he later gave her another $100 after dropping her off because he wasn't sure if she had been tipped for lap dances she had done earlier that night at the club. Oh Eric, you scoundrel.
  
• We have another case of a child being killed while doing wrestling moves. A 9-year-old boy in NC died after he suffered a broken neck when his 16-year-old mentally handicapped step-brother tried to perform some kind of wrestling move on him. The case immediately got national headlines and was compared to the Lionel Tate case that has been central to the WWF's lawsuit against the PTC. On MSNBC this week, they had a segment debating wrestling's influence on children and WWF Corporate Relations VP Gary Davis appeared on the show to defend wrestling and talked about how kids always imitate what they see on TV, argues that it's the parents' responsibility to monitor what their kids do, etc. Just the usual stuff.
  
• Hulk Hogan says his plans to start a new promotion are on hold for now, saying the major TV networks aren't interested in wrestling right now. Some of the names that have been attached to Hogan's idea were Jimmy Hart, Sting, Bret Hart, Roddy Piper, Kevin Sullivan, Sable, and Chyna. Some of them aren't legally able to do anything until their WCW deals expire and others (like Bret Hart), Dave doesn't believe for a second were even considering it. But either way, not happening for now.
  
• Sandman went on a radio show and said he's going to be starting full-time with a new promotion in Evansville, IN. He said the promotion will also have Curt Hennig, Sabu, Public Enemy, and a whole bunch of other former ECW stars. They already have their first show scheduled for the ECW Arena in Philadelphia and a few cities in between (that would be a company called Main Event Championship Wrestling. That first show had all the big ECW names on it, plus Buff Bagwell, Chris Harris, Mike Rotunda, and more. And far as I can tell, they never ran another show after that).
  
• At another indie show this week, a bunch of ICP fans were heckling all the wrestlers. Steve Corino worked the main event and got into a confrontation with one of the fans and it got physical. Corino ended up having to be pulled off the fan by a bunch of other wrestlers. Corino out here beating up juggalos, you hate to see it. (Here's an article I found on Deadspin where someone who was there writes in and tells the story of what happened).
  

READ: Deadspin Wrestler Run-Ins: Steve Corino beats up a juggalo

• The state of Nevada unanimously agreed to sanction MMA as a sport and confirmed that UFC 33 will take place at the Mandalay Bay Casino (fun fact: this show sucked and to this day, Dana White still calls UFC 33 the worst show they've ever done). Anyway, now that UFC PPVs are available on cable providers again, UFC is likely going to be the closest thing to competition WWF will have anytime soon. Dana White played down the idea of competing with pro wrestling, saying they compete with boxing. But he said if UFC gets a TV deal, he believes they could give WWF a run for their money.
  
• On Sunday Night Heat this week, Bob Holly pinned Mike Awesome clean. Dave thinks that's a pretty dumb decision and that none of the Alliance guys should be losing yet, especially to undercard guys, but apparently some WWF wrestlers (Undertaker specifically) that have worked with Awesome haven't been impressed with him as a worker and, well, here's the result.
  
• Dave finally read The Star tabloid interview with Chyna, where she talked about her reasons for leaving WWF and the Triple H/Stephanie affair. In regards to the affair, she said she was suspicious that Triple H (her boyfriend at the time) was cheating on her with Stephanie and said they admitted it when she confronted them. Chyna said she was heartbroken and had hoped to marry Triple H some day. But despite all that, she says it was unrelated to her leaving WWF, saying she left because they couldn't agree on money terms in her recent contract negotiations.
  
• Chyna did another interview on a Boston radio station and said she was scared and excited to try her luck in the entertainment world without being "Chyna." She also said she was surprised when WWF pulled out of their contract negotiations. She blamed the death of WCW and Vince having a monopoly as the reason she didn't get the money she was looking for. Dave says Chyna was asking to no longer work house shows so she could be off during the weeks to pursue acting roles, while still making top star WWF money, and they weren't going for that. Plus, ya know, the other stuff....
  
• Chris Benoit will be using the song "Whatever" by Canadian rock band Our Lady Peace as his entrance music whenever he eventually returns.
  
• Kane filmed a Chef Boyardee commercial last week, along with the one the Dudleyz filmed. (I can't find the Dudleyz commercial, but here's the Kane one).
  

WATCH: Kane's Chef Boyardee commercial

• Jim Ross did a conference call or something recently and talked about a lot of things. He said ECW didn't have the same number of fans WCW had, but said that WCW had eroded its fanbase so much by the end and said the ECW fans were much more vocal and passionate about the product. Said that Sting is 42-years-old and wants to stay home with his family and said he likely wouldn't be coming to WWF. Admitted that they were interested in bringing in Ric Flair and Goldberg, but it doesn't make economic sense for either side right now, since they still have those WCW contracts. Said a lot of the undercard WCW wrestlers they have under contract will be sent to the developmental companies like OVW or HWA so they don't get rusty and can improve some more. Said the long term goal is still for WWF and WCW to run as 2 separate companies, each with their own prime time weekly show, but there's no word on when that will happen. Said they haven't given any thought about what to do with the women's title now that Chyna is gone from the company and she was the champ, but Ross assumed they'll probably do a tournament for it eventually. Said he expects Jerry Lawler to return sooner or later, but he's dealing with some personal issues right now (yeah, Stacy had just left him at this point). Ross admitted that the locker room situation has been tense and uncomfortable lately, with the WCW guys trying to acclimate to the WWF way of doing things but said that aside from all the Buff Bagwell drama, there's been no serious issues.
  
• Speaking of locker room tensions, there's a lot of concern about job security among all the lower and midcard guys. With so much new talent lately and no other place in the U.S. to make a real living as a wrestler, a lot of guys are worried about not being used. If you're off TV, it's "out of sight, out of mind" and so a lot of wrestlers are hiding serious injuries so they don't get taken off TV and forgotten about. Also, because of the pressure to look good and stand out from the pack, sources tell Dave steroid use is making a big comeback lately.
  
• In a WWF.com column, Jim Ross wrote some veiled comments about people in the company leaking information to the internet and how those sources have hidden agendas and are liars and blah blah. (*laughs in Meltzer*) Dave says this is in reference to recent internet reports that WWF is planning to release a bunch of wrestlers soon. Dave says the stories aren't entirely true, but they're not entirely false either, as there are a lot of names who are on the chopping block right now due to the fact that there's just too many guys and not enough spots, so he expects to see some people gone soon. Dave also says there's major heat on some people in the office right now for these stories leaking out, but no names mentioned.
  
• Triple H has been backstage at the TV tapings for the last few weeks, helping with the booking of the shows. He was told by doctors that all this extra travel was putting him behind schedule on his rehab time and to stop flying out to every TV taping if he wants to make a full recovery. Triple H has decided to listen to the doctors and won't be going to the shows as much.
  
• There was some minor heat on RVD at the Invasion PPV because his airbrushed tights had a skull on it, and that's Austin's gimmick. Goddamn, this petty high school nonsense, I swear......anyway, there was a mixed reaction to RVD's match backstage. Obviously, RVD and Jeff Hardy stole the show and a lot of people loved it, but others criticized it, saying it was only good because RVD had the "right" opponent and wouldn't be able to have that kind of match with anyone else.
  
• The storyline on TV last week with Kurt Angle hugging Vince was an inside joke on DDP. Apparently, when DDP first signed his WWF deal, Vince went to shake his hand and DDP grabbed him and hugged him instead, like they were longtime friends. Apparently they found it funny and decided to parody it with Angle on TV.
  

WEDNESDAY: WWF financial details revealed, more on WCW purchase price, Vince Russo planning to be involved in new Australian promotion, Atsushi Onita elected to government position, Acclaim wants ECW, and more...

This is the continuation of my series highlighting specific critic's criticisms of TLJ. Part I on Humor is here, which also details my reasoning for this mining operation. Here we are covering Canto Bight, and we have everything from run of the mill iodized stuff to hail-sized rock salt on display, so adjust your goggles accordingly.

Johnson overplays his hand occasionally — most notably an unnecessary sequence at the casino city of Canto Bight that goes straight from a political sermon into a plot hole

Ethan Sacks, New York Daily News - Fresh

The bad news is, this involves an unnecessary trip to a kind of casino planet that doesn’t really advance the story.

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic - Fresh

A scene in an opulent casino is easily the most painful yet in this new generation of Star Wars flicks, eliciting images of the green screen busy set pieces of the early-2000 franchise additions, enticing to the youngest members of the audience who need their stories overly padded with shiny spectacle.

Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot - Fresh

Boyega is a loveable hero, and his new compadre Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) is a nice addition. However, as much as it isn’t overbearing, their entire sub-plot is when the adventure loses steam. This moves the film away from where all the interest is – Luke. At this point, it becomes a little disjointed and unnecessary, never reaching a point of excitement required for a chunk of plot of this degree.

Cameron Frew, FrewFilm - Fresh

an extended digression with Finn and Rose that doesn’t end up counting for much plotwise

Bob Chipman, Moviebob Central - Fresh

Sadly, Boyega's Finn -- still an appealing character -- is saddled with a go-nowhere plot-line that has him and Resistance mechanic Rose show up at a space casino and cross paths with a rogue with a heart of a gold (or maybe just rogue?) played by Benicio Del Toro. There's the kernel of interesting idea there as we glimpse the socioeconomic underpinnings of this galaxy far, far away in a way we've never seen before, but it's a digression whose payoff doesn't warrant the build-up. And when you're already the longest Star Wars ever made (two and a half hours!), some snipping here and there might not have been a bad idea.

Zaki Hasan, Zaki's Corner - Fresh

I’m not a big fan of Finn and Rose’s side adventure, which has the air of a spinoff story being tacked onto the main narrative (probably to give Finn a purpose, since Rey is doing her own thing with Luke). Apart from showcasing the power of hope on a younger generation, it’s not as well integrated into the seams of the larger story as it could’ve been.

Tomas Trussow, The Lonely Film Critic - Fresh

It’s Finn’s mission which takes the film off on a diversion where it didn’t really need to go. There’s a lot of comedic hijinks involved in all of this which George Lucas would have excised from the first draft of anything he ever wrote.

Niall Browne, Movies in Focus - Fresh

Much of the Canto Bight sequence feels unnecessary

Molly Templeton, Eugene Weekly - Fresh

First, both prominent new characters Rose and DJ seemed shoe-horned in, and Rose especially doesn't seem to have a real place in this film nor does she add anything to be hopeful about in the future. And while both Rey and Poe fans will probably be pleased with where their characters go, Finn sort of takes a step back, as he is sent off on a side adventure that seems like second-tier Star Wars. It's a diversion that takes up a good portion of the film and really serves no purpose to the overall story...worse yet, it seems to contain some heavy-handed political messages not commonly found, at least not this blatantly, in the Star Wars universe. These are more than just quibbles too: Most fans will not be used to the slow, lumbering pace or the general unevenness of this film...especially coming on the heels of the action-packed pacing that JJ Abrams brought in Episode VII.

Tom Santilli, AXS.com - Fresh

There’s some stuff that feels extraneous (the whole Canto Bight sequence, which seems to exist to set up a new Lando-like character played by Benicio del Toro), and the cycle of attack and retreat — mostly retreat — gets a bit monotonous.

Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com - Fresh

Muchas de las situaciones se sienten forzadas e innecesarias (por ejemplo, la aventura de Finn y Rose, me parece innecesaria).

Ruben Peralta Rigaud, Cocalecas - Fresh

Their jaunt to the casino planet of Canto Bight serves little purpose besides introducing Del Toro, updating the cantina scene, and offering up a tired CGI chase scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Attack of the Clones. Kudos (maybe) to Johnson for introducing income inequality to the Star Wars universe, but the entire sequence feels rushed and shoehorned into an already long movie.

Pete Vonder Haar Houston Press - Fresh

The weakest of these is Finn's. It's briskly paced and full of action yes, but let's just say a casino is no cantina... Worse, it also sees him interacting with Prequel Trilogy levels of CGI critters.

Karl Puschmann, New Zealand Herald - Fresh

But the worst distraction “The Last Jedi” has to offer involves erstwhile Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and a Resistance maintenance worker named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a subplot every bit as visually and narratively inept as Lucas’ prequels were taken as.

J. Olson, Cinemixtape - Rotten

Finn’s entire storyline could be cut and the film would be better off. As Finn was one of the driving-force leads of The Force Awakens and also a charming character, this is a disappointing development. His adventure is such a low point that it would not seem out of place in one of George Lucas’ efforts from between 1999 and 2005, and it serves little purpose to the film’s overall plot.

Alex Doenau, Trespass - Fresh

there’s too much going on in The Last Jedi, and a lot of it feels like filler. Besides the aforementioned, stalled-out space battle, there’s a clunky sequence in a casino that goes on far too long, a lot of distracting cameos, and new characters inhabited by Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro, who bring close to nothing to the proceedings.

Bob Grimm, Reno News and Review - Fresh

Finn and Rose (a new addition to the principal cast) distract the audience with an overlong and ultimately unnecessary side plot.

Richard Dove, International Business Times - Rotten

And this plotline feeds right into the absolutely unforgivably terrible subplot, which is the adventures of Finn (John Boyega) the cowardly ex-storm trooper, and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), the class-conscious engineer, who go on a fetch quest that is every bit as pointless as the whole matter of the military nonsense, only even worse, because it hinges on terrible comedy, bad CGI, and a spectacularly horrible moment when Johnson stops the film in its tracks to provide a ruthlessly on-the-nose lesson about economic inequality and the military-industrial complex.

Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending - Rotten

Some of what happens on the casino planet — called Canto Bight, and sure to figure in the next film — is goofy on a level as cringe-inducing as things we saw in the prequel trilogy; like, Jar-Jar Binks–awful.

MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher - Fresh

Johnson does his best to hustle from one location to the next, but the narrative has a tendency from time to time to drag. The biggest example of this are the scenes on Canto Bight. Which is a shame, because a huge chunk of the film’s message is established on these scenes. But the very nature of the story, with its many moving parts, inadvertently makes this section of the film feel like a diversion.

Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm - Fresh

The humour is kind of sour in other places, too, such as the silly neo-cantina scene as Finn and Rose track the whereabouts of a mysterious encrypter, who might be the rebellion’s last hope, into a sort of galactic Monte Carlo. The abundance of slapstick there and in other parts of the film doesn’t click and feels forced.

Diva Velez, TheDivaReview.com - Fresh

In an unnecessary and quite frankly preposterous third subplot, Finn (John Boyega) and a new character, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), race against the clock to locate an underworld figure who can help them neutralise the First Order’s tracking device, thus allowing the diminished rebel fleet to escape.

Vicky Roach, Daily Telegraph (Australia) - Rotten

Weak points come with awkward humour that lacks comedic rhythm and an unnecessary casino escapade, where a disposable underworld character DJ (Benicio del Toro) is introduced, that subsequently soft lens into what is essentially a children's adventure tale about animals

Craig Takeuchi, Georgia Straight - Fresh

Unfortunately, we keep getting dragged away from the only emotionally resonant portion of the film to watch Finn and Rose engage in sub-prequel hijinks on the casino planet. Everything here is forced and awful, visually uninteresting and often dark to the point of unwatchability, lousy with mawkish little kids making bug eyes at the camera as we marvel at the horror of economic inequality, and drowned in an atrocious patina of truly terrible CGI. It calls to mind the droid factory in Attack of the Clones and the pre-podrace sequence in The Phantom Menace. Most offensively, the whole Finn/Rose diversion has absolutely no importance to the forward momentum of the plot—it's utterly irrelevant, even nonsensical.

Sonny Bunch, Washington Free Beacon - Rotten

Not everything in the film works: a few of the goofier comic moments fail to land and true to the legacy of Lucas there’s a fair amount of eye-wincing dialogue. More importantly, the second act bows under the weight of too many narrative strands; Finn’s away mission comes off as a bit superfluous, as does Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo, and both Rose and the beloved Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) are sadly underwritten. In a trade-off that brings scope and complexity, Johnson has sacrificed narrative efficiency.

Christopher Machell, CineVue - Fresh

I didn't like the sequence in a casino--a callback to the Star Wars Cantina, of course, but also a chance to discuss the evils of war profiteers and the 1%. There are creatures there, there's slapstick, there's a heist of sorts, and it all harks back to my favourite of Johnson's films, The Brothers Bloom, in the interplay between the characters, in the lightness and clarity of the scheme. But it's tonally disruptive, and it introduces a trio of children who seem like part of a different film.

Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central - Fresh

Finn and Rose’s trip to a gambling planet – basically a space Monaco – flits between light fun and on-the-nose political narrative.

Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle - Fresh

It also begs the question why the space casino sequence, arguably the least relevant to the core story, wasn’t dramatically trimmed back. Aside from a throwaway final shot, this section of the film is the weakest – designed to depict profiteering space-capitalism run rampant (ironically, also depicting a stable of space-horses also running rampant).

Patrick Kolan, Shotgun Cinema - Fresh

But as ingenious as this setup may be, it also gives rise to the film's most pointless subplot. After waking from his coma, Finn (John Boyega) contrives a means by which he can disable the New Order's tracking device, albeit one that requires him to sneak off the fleeing vessel, travel to a Monaco-styled casino planet, track down a master codebreaker and infiltrate the enemy's warship undetected. This enormous MacGuffin sees Boyega partnered with the charming Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, a Resistance engineer low in status but high in pluck. The problem is that their side adventure does absolutely nothing to advance the actual story.

Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground - Fresh

Unfortunately, John Boyega’s Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe and Kelly Marie Tran—as Finn’s new partner-in-rebellion Rose—are given the equivalent of busywork while the rest of the cast moves the plot along.

Simon Miraudo, Student Edge - Fresh

A detour to a casino planet where Finn and a resistance mechanic named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) search for a codebreaker to help them disrupt the First Order's tracking of the retreating resistance ships feels like a trip into another movie. The stakes here seem far lower than the live-or-die scenario facing Poe, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) and the others trying to make their getaway.

Greg Maki Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) Fresh

The only characters not doing a huge amount of growing are Finn (John Boyega) and mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), and not for nothing, their subplot opens up a momentum drain that is the only weakness in The Last Jedi. Boyega and Tran are perfectly enjoyable, and their subplot isn’t a complete waste of time, but you start to feel the length of The Last Jedi when it veers off with them, and Finn’s arc is a pale echo of Poe’s so it’s not like much is being accomplished.

Sarah Marrs Lainey Gossip Fresh

Rey’s journey toward learning the ways of the Jedi is far more entertaining than Finn’s convoluted (and ultimately pointless) storyline

Josh Bell Las Vegas Weekly Fresh

Rose’s character is front and center in the film’s weakest sequences. We’re diverted to a city where the worst of the worst frolic. No, not the usual hives of scum and villainy. It’s a casino where the very, very rich cavort. The evil One Percenters! If you’re not immediately yanked out of the story here you deserve a prize. The accompanying dialogue is equally clunky, as is the reason all these vapid souls gained their fortunes.

Christian Toto, HollywoodInToto.com - Rotten

Far less successful is the time spent with the rebels on the run from Hux and the First Order. Not only is it centered on the slowest space chase in sci-fi history, but subplots featuring Poe, Finn (John Boyega), and Rose (newcomer Kelly Marie Tran) go absolutely nowhere. Sure we get introduced to DJ (Benicio Del Toro) and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), but it’s with actions that fail to connect either through sheer stupidity or the simple truth that their absence wouldn’t change the story in the slightest. They’re obvious filler, and as is the Disney way (witness their Marvel films) the studio’s never met a character that couldn’t be jammed into a movie for no reason other than the misguided belief that more is better. Finn and Rose’s adventure in particular offers some additional action beats and a visit to a casino — think the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from Star Wars, but for the 1% — but it is meaningless noise.

Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects - Fresh

Meanwhile, what feels too much like the “B plot” side adventure has Finn and Rose on a mission that takes them into another film entirely, a sort of intergalactic James Bond-meets-Free Willy. It’s hard not to feel that their entire subplot could be axed in order to make The Last Jedi stronger and tighter, which is unfortunate.

Kaila Hale-Stern, The Mary Sue - Fresh

There is a whole section that feels out of kilter and harks back to the CGI naffness of the prequels — and is also virtually pointless to the plot.

Jamie East, The Sun (UK) - Fresh

The film’s epic 150-minute runtime allows plenty of room for Johnson’s inventiveness, but there’s also a tiny bit of fat in the middle of the movie, specifically in the Canto Bight scenes with Finn and Rose. The casino city itself is gorgeous and has some crazy-cool characters, plus Finn and Rose’s presence there shines a light on some new, worthwhile themes for the Star Wars franchise. However, in terms of the overall story, the whole escapade feels a little pointless and small. It doesn’t help that Benicio del Toro’s new character, DJ, who is part of the same storyline, is largely insignificant.

Germain Lussier, io9.com - Fresh

Star Wars: The Last Jedi does have a clear weak spot -- specifically the side plot that develops between Finn (John Boyega) and newly-introduced Resistance member Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran). Following a genuinely funny meet-up between the two characters, they are given their own special mission searching for a codebreaker who can assist in the battle against the First Order. But this storyline never feels particularly inspired or impactful as everything else going down in the movie. While it is constructed to fit with the larger themes of the film, features its own interesting expectation-flipping turns, and does eventually have a key impact on the macro scale, it's also the only part of the feature that ever feels expendable, and not helping anything is that it features the weakest visual effects of the blockbuster (especially during a second-act chase sequence).

Eric Eisenberg, CinemaBlend - Fresh

Finn and Rose’s mission takes them to Canto Bight, a kind of Monte Carlo peopled by extras from Babylon 5, and feels like it is just ticking the Weird Alien Bar box started by the Cantina. A ride on space horses also feels like a needless diversion, as does Benicio Del Toro’s space rogue, whose strange, laconic presence never really makes its mark.

Ian Freer, Empire Magazine - Fresh

It’s a shame, then, that the righteousness of Finn and Rose’s place in the film is undermined slightly by the limpness of their mission. Perhaps feeling there had to be some kind of Mos Eisley–esque sequence in the film, Johnson sends the pair to a casino city full of all kinds of creatures. It’s fun, sure, but the whole operation ultimately turns out to be a red herring. At least there’s some nice musing on liberation during this stretch, reminding us of the real stakes of this long story—freedom is, after all, what the Empire denies and the Rebel Alliance promises. And in a gorgeous third-act sequence—which includes the film’s true Empire Strikes Back homage—Finn and Rose finally get the emboldened moments they deserve. I just wish they fit more integrally into the central thesis of the film, that they were just as special, in their way, as Rey is, glinting with messianic power as she ascends.

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair - Fresh

Of the three simultaneous plots, it’s Finn’s that sometimes drags down the energy, particularly with an introduction of a shady thief played by Benicio del Toro, the only new addition to the cast that doesn’t quite work; he seems to be acting in his own private movie, and it’s not as good as this one.

Will Leitch Paste Magazine - Fresh

Where the film struggles the most is on Canto Bight. Taken on her own, Rose isn’t a bad addition to the Star Wars mythos, and the movie definitely needs someone to play against Finn. Unfortunately, they lack the electric chemistry we saw between Finn and Rey in The Force Awakens, and their secret mission in a casino feels like it should be far more entertaining than it actually is.

Matt Goldberg, Collider - Fresh

Some action sequences are superfluous and unengaging. Benicio del Toro all but cameos as a sort of hobo hustler, while John Boyega’s Finn is sidelined, relegated to relatively inconsequential hi-jinx.

Alex Godfrey, GQ Magazine [UK] - Fresh

Finn (John Boyega) and newcomer Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) attempt an espionage mission that takes them to what is the Star Wars equivalent of the French Riviera. It’s a casino city named Canto Bight, and their adventures here push the Rick’s Café sensibilities from the original Star Wars’ cantina sequence to their limit. Nevertheless, this entire subplot amounts to a whole lot of padding while the real tough and revelatory decisions are made on Ahch-To.

David Crow, Den of Geek - Fresh

Plot-wise, I felt the entire side story at the casino world of Canto Bight was unnecessary. If you cut the entire sequence out of the film, it would have little impact on the core narrative.

Scott Chitwood ComingSoon.net - Fresh

Finn (John Boyega) wakes up, meets a admiring fan down in maintenance named Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and they head off on their own adventure, a detour that somehow combines the louche slickness of Cloud City and moralizing at its most Disney.

Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman - Fresh

But The Last Jedi’s two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn (John Boyega) and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).

Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine - Rotten

There are a couple of big names that fail to deliver much aside from, perhaps, realizing their childhood dreams of being in a “Star Wars” movie. A trip to a city that might as well be called Space Macau also fails to pay many dividends.

Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal - Fresh

Case in point is the plot involving Finn (John Boyega) and new hero Rose's (Kelly Marie Tran) McGuffinesque mission to Canto Bight, which is of the ashtray-on-a-speederbike variety, and takes away from the tension cranked up elsewhere.

Harry Guerin, RTÉ (Ireland) - Fresh

The remaining 20% is made up of two different locales, one of which is entirely superfluous to the story. Essentially, there is a subplot that introduces Benicio del Toro’s mysterious work of eccentricity, except it doesn’t really do much of interest with him. Admittedly, it feels as if the character could be destined for bigger things in the final chapter, but I can only go off of what I watched, and well, the middle portion of The Last Jedi is stuck in the furthest setting from lightspeed. The journey expands to a space-Vegas full of various alien life forms and inhabitants, but it’s not as visually striking as previously explored planets. Additionally, by design, there seems to be filler injected simply because the other characters need things to do while Rey accomplishes what she needs to with Luke.

Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth - Fresh

The scenes on Canto Bight seemed like an unnecessary divert for Rose (a new character I actually really like) and Finn. This “casino planet” was like a scene right out of a low-budget Sy-Fy channel movie shot in Vancouver. It felt too familiar and earthbound to be a scene in an other-worldly scene in a Star Wars movie. The Rose/Finn alien horse race through the casino that ruined the galactic one-percenters good time and did some property damage was just ridiculous and should have been cut. Rose and Finn flopping around on the alien horse just looked like a bad theme park ride.

Chris Gore, Film Threat - Fresh

There’s a lengthy diversion to the casino planet of Canto Bight that feels pointless and tacked on just for the sake of giving us a cool new corner of the galaxy to feast our eyes on.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly - Fresh
And that's it for Part II. Happy Holidays to all my fellow fans and miners! Next week I will conclude with Part III, which will cover- well, let's just say it's the longest of this series by far. Heh.

No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.
-Roger Ebert
The length of TLJ was the most common criticism by far, with 50% of RT Top Critic's citing it as a problem. Thus, this is the longest entry of this series, and possibly the last, unless I do a smaller part on niche issues. Previous parts cover Humor and Canto Bight.

The movie is overstuffed with plot, and by the time the visually intoxicating and eye-popping last showdown happens, it feels like a set piece that should have been saved for the next film. At a whopping two hours and 32 minutes, “The Last Jedi” overstays its welcome just a tad.

Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service - Fresh

Writer-director Rian Johnson steps into the franchise fray and does a creditable, if uninspired, job. At about 2-1/2 hours, it’s a long sit.

Peter Rainer,Christian Science Monitor - Fresh

Rian Johnson delivers a film that’s a bit too long at 2½ hours

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Fresh

Does the movie, like its predecessor, rely on familiar tropes a bit more than it should? Yes, I think it does. Is it, at a solid two-and-a-half hours, considerably longer than it needed to be? Yes, that too.

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic - Fresh

It’s simply too long at two hours and 36 minutes – and sometimes too damn much. The screen is so crowded with character and incident that you might need a scorecard to keep up.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone - Fresh

The problem is that the narrative threads connecting them are lazily knitted and sometimes tangled or broken. The overall plot is underwhelming and there’s far too much padding, especially during the first hour. There’s a sense that Johnson is giving busy-work to certain characters while others are catching up. The Last Jedi is a great 105-minute movie stretched too thin.

James Berardinelli, ReelViews - Fresh

The midsection sags and, other than the heroes’ desperate attempts to survive, there’s no central story line to pull the various satellites of action in its wake. Some of the characters, like Captain Phasma, get frustratingly little screen time.You feel the 2½-hour length at points.

Ty Burr, Boston Globe - Fresh

The movie, though - at 152 minutes, easily the lengthiest in the series - drags in the middle, particularly when Rose and Finn go off on a complicated mission to disable an enemy tracking device. The subplot not only goes nowhere, it takes forever to do so, and makes me wonder if this new trilogy is going to have the same problem as the prequels - material for two terrific films stretched out over three.

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger - Fresh

The film’s paunchy middle section includes a trip to a casino that might better have ended up on the cutting-room floor. The unnecessary padding accounts for the 152-minute running time, a franchise record, which will test the patience (and bladders) of even the most devoted followers.

Peter Howell, Toronto Star - Fresh

Nor is its frankly excessive 152-minute running time. There is no excuse for a long, inessential stampede of runaway space horses that has zero value beyond the sheer "Ben-Hur" spectacle of the thing.

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune - Fresh

Johnson's many additions become too much of a good thing and The Last Jedi grows crowded, busy and long. Johnson's dialogue is flat and sounds stilted in the mouths of his younger actors, while their comic delivery can be so offhand that it dismisses the jokes.

Kate Taylor, Globe and Mail - Rotten

The film simply drags too much in the middle. Somewhere in the film’s 152-minute running time is an amazing 90-minute movie.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly - Fresh

Johnson at times overreaches trying to balance these separate storylines and myriad of characters into one cohesive unit. Lupita Nyong’o has nothing to do in her glorified cameo appearance, while the Del Toro section fails to reach its potential. The result is a bloated running time of about 2 ½ hours — that includes about seven different points in which I was sure the movie was going to end only to see it continue to plow ahead. You always want your Star Wars films to move at light speed, not drag in the middle.

Mara Reinstein, Us Weekly - Fresh

At other points in the 152-minute film, time should have been compressed, and wasn’t. The storytelling bogs down in a middle section having to do with finding a code-cracker who can gain access to an enemy destroyer. (A dubious character played by Benicio Del Toro isn’t sufficiently amusing.) Kylo’s inner conflicts, while central to the plot, leave him looking awfully mopey for long periods of time as he struggles to resolve them.

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal - Fresh

With a running time of two and a half hours, “The Last Jedi” drags a bit in the second act. Ridley and Hamill are great together, but the Reluctant Jedi act plays on for at least one scene too many.

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times - Fresh

Johnson’s effort is ultimately a disappointment. If anything, it demonstrates just how effective supervising producer Kathleen Kennedy and the forces that oversee this now Disney-owned property are at molding their individual directors’ visions into supporting a unified corporate aesthetic — a process that chewed up and spat out helmers such as Colin Trevorrow, Gareth Edwards, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. But Johnson was either strong enough or weak enough to adapt to such pressures, and the result is the longest and least essential chapter in the series.

Peter Debruge, Variety - Fresh

Unfortunately, The Last Jedi has almost as much Attack of the Clones as it does The Empire Strikes Back in that it’s overlong, under-edited and has at least one particularly long-winded CGI flurry of a sequence that harkens back to the darkest days of the franchise. There’s no whining about sand getting everywhere and the acting is really strong across the board (Hamill is particularly great back in Jedi robes, ham and all) but The Last Jedi could definitely have used a second editorial pass.

Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot - Fresh

At 2 1/2 hours, Star Wars: The Last Jedi could have been tightened-up in the editing room, cutting out that bloated middle section and removing things like Maz Kanata’s cameo and the cute slave kids which feel like they dropped in from a totally different movie. When it works, it really works but when it doesn’t, it feels like bad fan-fiction with a million dollar budget.

Niall Browne, Movies in Focus - Fresh

I can only wonder what The Last Jedi might have been with Finn and Poe taking a backseat (like how the latter was absent for three-quarters of The Force Awakens) so thirty minutes could be cut and the “important” stuff made tighter. Because there is a great film within what’s ultimately a good one.

Jared Mobarak, BuffaloVibe - Fresh

Whereas the first half is a sort of a convoluted mess just for the sake to pad out the runtime especially with an inconsistent tone, "The Last Jedi" becomes a dark and exciting sequel that becomes the film you've been looking for by the 75-minute mark.

Rendy Jones, Rendy Reviews, Fresh

the film is probably 10-15 minutes too long. Yes, Snoke (Andy Serkis) was not given near enough explanation and Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) was wasted.

Robert Daniels, 812filmreviews - Fresh

It's a two-and-a-half hour movie. It needs to be good in its own right, not just setting up for the next episode.

Tony Baker, Tony Baker Comedy - Rotten

Johnson ends up biting off more than he can chew. He's juggling too many storylines, and takes too long to move the narrative forward. Fatigue sets in about three-quarters of the way in. He doesn't heed the lesson of the chapter “Jedi” often resembles, “The Empire Strikes Back.” That film, still the best “Star Wars.,” ended with a whopper of a cliffhanger. Johnson resists the urge to leave most of his strands unresolved, and as a result his film begins to feel unwieldy when it should be picking up momentum. At two and a half hours, it could have used a trim of at least 15 minutes.

Ruben Rosario, MiamiArtZine - Fresh

but there are problems with the first half of "The Last Jedi." After an exciting initial space battle, to say that the mid-section of the movie drags would be an understatement. First, both prominent new characters Rose and DJ seemed shoe-horned in, and Rose especially doesn't seem to have a real place in this film nor does she add anything to be hopeful about in the future. And while both Rey and Poe fans will probably be pleased with where their characters go, Finn sort of takes a step back, as he is sent off on a side adventure that seems like second-tier Star Wars. It's a diversion that takes up a good portion of the film and really serves no purpose to the overall story...worse yet, it seems to contain some heavy-handed political messages not commonly found, at least not this blatantly, in the Star Wars universe. These are more than just quibbles too: Most fans will not be used to the slow, lumbering pace or the general unevenness of this film...especially coming on the heels of the action-packed pacing that JJ Abrams brought in Episode VII.

Tom Santilli, AXS.com - Fresh

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is also, at two hours and thirty-two minutes, the longest of the nine movies thus far, and deep into the second hour it can feel a little draining. There’s some stuff that feels extraneous (the whole Canto Bight sequence, which seems to exist to set up a new Lando-like character played by Benicio del Toro), and the cycle of attack and retreat — mostly retreat — gets a bit monotonous.

Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com - Fresh

At times it burns a tad too slow: two-thirds through its jam-packed 152 minutes, I felt the need for a 7th-inning stretch.

Michael Sragow, Film Comment Magazine - Fresh

Aunque este clímax habría funcionado bien como final, “The Last Jedi” no termina (desafortunadamente) después de esto. Es seguido por otros 40 minutos, con baches, en los que los héroes se reúnen y tienen que pelear una batalla final. Sin embargo, la película pierde un poco de su trazabilidad aquí, cuando los personajes, las fuerzas y las explosiones siempre aparecen exactamente donde se necesitan para la trama.

Ruben Peralta Rigaud, Cocalecas - Fresh

The movie’s main failing is that it tries to stuff too much plot into its over-long 2 hour and 30 minute run time. The result is an ending that feels endless and anti-climactic while several elements that could have been gob-smacking feel rushed and underdeveloped. It particularly does a disservice to Kylo Ren, as we’re never quite sure what his motivation is.

Megan Basham, WORLD - Fresh

I both loved it and strongly disliked it at the same time. I feel like there's a really great movie in there, all the pieces are there, everything is brilliant, but then there's a lot of extra fat that needed to be trimmed off or rearranged or omitted completely.

Steph Cozza, Aggressive Comix - Fresh

At two-and-a-half hours, with about nine separate cliffhanger endings, it’s a bit long

Bill O'Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper - Fresh

If you can accept the excess, the weird humour, the entirely inessential subplot, and the fact that it could stand to end a scene earlier, then the series will continue to thrive in a galaxy far, far away.

Alex Doenau, Trespass - Fresh

The script is flabby; every scene has purpose, but certain aspects feel overlong and jarring. Just like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, it also suffers several endings too many.

Owen Richards, The Arts Desk - Fresh

At two and a half hours, this is the longest Star Wars picture to date, and I wondered if they’d tried to pack too much in.

Molly Laich, Missoula Independent - Fresh

I’m saying some of this movie seems a little half baked, and also overstuffed. If there’s any kind of movie I want to be over two and a half hours long, it’s a Star Wars movie. But, at that length, it needs to be a really good Star Wars movie, not a so-so one. The Last Jedi is so-so.

Bob Grimm, Reno News and Review - Fresh

The Last Jedi has a few good ideas but these are utterly lost amidst an over-long and utterly unsatisfying overall plot. Replete with poor dialogue, irritating tonal shifts and superfluous scenes, The Last Jedi adds very little to the saga except an overwhelming sense of disappointment not felt since the release of The Phantom Menace.

Richard Dove, International Business Times - Rotten

It is more than 150 minutes long. It has too many plot twists and too much fighting and too many characters.

Mark R. Leeper, Mark Leeper's Reviews - Fresh

Many have complained or commented on the length of The Last Jedi. It did start to feel long towards the end, yet I don’t think it was due to the actual time stamp of the film. Instead, I believe it is because of the drawn out plots within the film itself. Many parts of the story are over showcased destroying the strength and believably in the plot.

Stephanie Archer, Film Inquiry - Fresh

This film did not need to be 152 minutes and should have been closer to the 120 minute standard established by the earlier films. I hope one day we’ll see a fan cut that is actually closer to two hours.

Chris Gore, Film Threat - Fresh

The Last Jedi is still overstuffed, slightly too long, reliant on some vaguely-defined powers, and mostly consists of an endless chase towards a shifting MacGuffin.

Vincent Mancini, FilmDrunk - Fresh

The Last Jedi is 50 fucking minutes too long, and the most excruciatingly boring movie that has ever been released in this franchise. And this is a franchise that once opened up a movie by talking about controversial tax legislation.

Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending - Rotten

The Last Jedi has some issues. Pacing is the biggest one. This is the longest Star Wars film so far, and it feels like it. Johnson does his best to hustle from one location to the next, but the narrative has a tendency from time to time to drag.

Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm - Fresh

While Luke leads the Force thread, the battle between good and evil, the rest feels a bit standard issue action film lurching through one, or two, too many cycles of near peril. This is in part down to writer-director Rian Johnson and also down to patchy leads.

Aine O'Connor, Sunday Independent (Ireland) - Fresh

Writedirector Rian Johnson’s movie is underwhelming. Where it falters is a story that borrows heavily from others in the franchise like The Empire Strikes Back. That I can live with, but I can’t live with unnecessary length. This is an overdone 2 1/2 hour movie that would have been a terrific 90-minute extravaganza.
The first hour drags. The predictable second hour is just as tedious in more spots than not before Johnson finally moves you to the even more predictable slam bang action of the last half-hour.

Gary Wolcott, Tri-City Herald - Fresh

At 152 minutes, The Last Jedi is the longest of the nine Star Wars films to date — it’s also the only one where the length is felt. While all the scenes involving younglings should have been deep-sixed, the rest of the fatty tissue can be forgiven, since it simply meant Johnson wanted to make sure fans were saturated and satisfied. Yet there aren’t many vignettes that couldn’t have benefited from a judicious trim here or there.

Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing(Charlotte) - Fresh

At 2 hours and 32 minutes, the longest ever in the series, there are lots of highlights and probably a few too many endings

Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily - Fresh

Despite the Rey-Luke drama, the first half of The Last Jedi is its most lumbering and uneven, never really clicking as it rambles through its multiple plotlines in a manner that feels simultaneously rushed and overlong.

James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk - Fresh

However, there are moments towards the end of the film that feel as though they are just a tad unnecessary, that the race to the finale is going on just a little too long.

Irene Falvey, Film Ireland Magazine - Fresh

So what's necessary to know about the 40th anniversary "Star Wars" is that, at two and a half hours, it's at least a half-hour too long (maybe 45 minutes) and it's overfull of the usual digital battle sequences which so many of us have come to consider a wee bit old hat in the decades since "Star Wars" introduced us to a new thing back in 1977.

Jeff Simon, Buffalo News - Fresh

Johnson has sorted all of this material into an elaborate roundelay that feels endless (the movie is way too long at two and a half hours). Surely sections of the film could have been trimmed—maybe the Laura Dern scenes, which cry out for compression, or the training sequences with Luke and Rey (in which he says things like "Reach out with your feelings").

Kurt Loder, Reason Online - Fresh

The film is long, however, and begins to feel more than a little labored by the time the various epic showdowns finally take place.

Piers Marchant, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - Rotten

A lot of “The Last Jedi” is engrossing and emotional—but there’s also the long runtime, uneven pacing, and slightly underdeveloped characters to deal with. “The Last Jedi” is often exceptional, but its desire to do too many things, tell too many stories, and continue expanding its own cast and narrative makes the film fundamentally imbalanced.

Roxana Hadadi, Chesapeake Family Magazine - Fresh

There is a great deal going on in The Last Jedi and the way it splits off the main characters into separate but intertwined stories makes for a long, over-plotted film that even starts to drag a little in the middle.

Allan Hunter, Daily Express (UK) - Fresh

A few of the goofier comic moments fail to land and true to the legacy of Lucas there’s a fair amount of eye-wincing dialogue. More importantly, the second act bows under the weight of too many narrative strands; Finn’s away mission comes off as a bit superfluous, as does Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo, and both Rose and the beloved Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) are sadly underwritten. In a trade-off that brings scope and complexity, Johnson has sacrificed narrative efficiency.

Christopher Machell, CineVue - Fresh

If “The Last Jedi” has a main flaw it’s that it’s too long at just over two-and-a-half hours. When the film is cross-cutting between the escape of the Resistance and the showdown with Snoke, one might assume this was the climax of the film. In fact, there’s much more to come.

Daniel M. Kimmel, New England Movies Weekly - Fresh

At 152 minutes, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" is too long, and could have been trimmed by at least 10-15 minutes.

David Kaplan, Kaplan vs. Kaplan - Fresh

Despite being overlong and drenched in déjà vu (replete with conversations about one’s parents, whether or not one will ‘turn’, whether one is the last hope or the new hope, etcetera etcetera) I appreciated a lot of The Last Jedi, in the same way I appreciate re-reading a decent book – respecting the structure and craft of it, and feeling no sense of surprise.

Luke Buckmaster, The Daily Review/Crikey - Rotten

At 152 minutes, “The Last Jedi” is probably 20 minutes too long yet never fails to entertain.

Maria Sciullo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Fresh

If some of these detours drag on a bit, hampering momentum and bulking up The Last Jedi’s not-entirely-necessary two-hour-and 32-minute runtime, well, at least the various locales are fun to look at.

Rebecca Pahle, Film Journal International - Fresh

a running time of 152 or so minutes that easily could have been tightened down quite a bit

Jim Judy, Screen It! - Fresh

While many complained – justifiably – that the previous entry, The Force Awakens, was nothing but a remake of 1977’s A New Hope, the same sort of narrative déjà vu is at play here, to a certain degree. Equally troublesome is Jedi’s bloated running time. Clocking in at 2 ½ hours, the movie seems longer than it actually is due to the fact we’re going over well-covered narrative territory.

Charles Koplinski, Illinois Times - Rotten

It’s too long by a good 30 minutes, feels like two films mashed together, has about five endings and it seems to be taking cues from the George R. R. Martin school of right-angled plot twists.

Patrick Kolan, Shotgun Cinema - Fresh

Overly long and consistently clunky, The Last Jedi ultimately proves a bit of a mixed bag. Too often the dialogue is exposition heavy and played for easy laughs.

Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground - Fresh

The Last Jedi is overlong, heavy-handed and fun if mostly uninspired.

James Verniere, Boston Herald - Fresh

At 151 minutes, the film is overlong and repetition sets in, not just for this film but for the series in general

Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews - Fresh

The Last Jedi is the party that never wants to end. It keeps going and going – and going – until there is no corner of the house left to decorate. It pushes all the buttons. It is constantly in competition with itself (it comes with two huge ending sequences). It is also baggy in places, and that’s not something I’d expected.

Chris Wasser, The Herald (Ireland) - Fresh

At the same time, it does take a while for “Last Jedi” to get up to speed. Some of the humor feels a little distracting and the lengthy final product suggests a tighter execution might have felt more resonant.

Josh Terry, Deseret News (Salt Lake City) - Fresh

Or maybe it's just a case of "The Last Jedi" itself overstaying its welcome with a running time topping two and a half hours.

Greg Maki, Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) - Fresh

This is the longest Star Wars movie yet, clocking in at 150 minutes, and it has at least one ending too many, and a middle that sags a bit.

Rain Jokinen, MullingMovies.com - Fresh

We’ve seen this story before. Sure, “stuff” happens over the film’s 157-minutes but our main characters remain pretty much in the same place. You’d swear time stands still.

Dana Barbuto, The Patriot Ledger - Fresh

“The Last Jedi” is the longest of the “Star Wars” efforts (152 minutes) and feels it

Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com - Fresh

At 152 minutes, it’s also way too damn long. And Rian Johnson should not have been allowed to write and direct. The script is a problem — it has only two really great “moments” which isn’t enough for 152 minutes. But it also doesn’t feel quite right — the language, the iconography, the weirdly campy humor at the beginning — it doesn’t feel a part of the Star Wars universe.

Ray Greene, CineGods.com - Rotten

But the character moments and the explorations of moral ambiguity aren’t quite compelling enough to compensate for the slow pacing in the middle (one thing a Star Wars movie should never be is dull), and it takes too long to get to the most rousing action sequences.

Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly - Fresh

I don’t want to be too generous. I would cut 15 minutes out. There are editing choices that leave the film feeling choppy when it should feel smooth.

David Poland, Movie City News - Fresh

In truth, it takes a very long time to get from the film’s exhilarating start to that moving sign-off. Stars Wars: The Last Jedi lasts fully two-and-a-half hours, and there were moments towards the end when I felt like one of those poor Cubans listening to Fidel Castro at the height of his oratorical vigour: just as you’re planning your route to the exit, it lurches into yet another new lease of life.

Brian Viner, Daily Mail (UK) - Fresh

Editor Bob Ducsay moves the individual sequences along with dispatch; it isn’t his fault that at two-and-a-half hours the movie overstays its welcome. That’s the fault of Johnson’s decision to pile climax upon climax as if they were on sale at Screenplays-R-Us, apparently unwilling to jettison any of the ideas he’s had for propelling the story forward.

Frank Swietek, One Guy's Opinion - Fresh

Which leads into another problem I mentioned briefly earlier -- the pacing. Watching the first hour, I had the uncomfortable sense that maybe it needed trimming by about ten minutes or so, and that Rey's and Luke's story kept stalling and going in circles for a while. Then, the pacing in the last hour is so spot-on, it confirms all of those earlier feelings. Adding to the problem is the choice of starting point for the film. I realize kicking off with a more action-driven sequence has benefits, but it felt disorienting since we remember how the last film ended and probably want to pick up that thread first. It was an easy call, I feel, and the film's choice merely confirms my own sense that there was a better option.

Mark Hughes, Forbes - Fresh

The 2 hr and 30-minute runtime really hurt the film. I feel like there are just certain spots throughout the film where it just drags. It hard to pinpoint exactly when and where they occur on just one viewing but I was definitely bored at times.

Scott Menzel, We Live Entertainment - Fresh

“The Last Jedi” suffers from “The Lord of the Rings” syndrome — it seems like it might never end. It also poaches scenes, ideas and moments from “Harry Potter,” “The Hunger Games” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

David Frese, Kansas City Star - Fresh

At 152 minutes, “The Last Jedi” runs long, with a bit too much time spent on Ahch-To. And Hamill — who shares the weathered, lion-like look of modern-day Robert Plant — turns in a true love-it-or-hate-it portrayal of an aged Skywalker.

Ross Raihala, St. Paul Pioneer Press - Fresh

At over two-and-a-half hours, the film had me reconsidering if I really needed a Finn v. Phasma fight, or a five-act structure. So consider the urgency. A wordsmith in his own right, Johnson seems to be dumbing himself down here for the sake of the brand. He manages to pose some of the most complex ideas on morality and war this franchise has ever attempted, but is forced to breeze through and cap them off with trite buzzwords.

Conor O'Donnell, The Film Stage - Fresh

The film is overlong at two and a half hours, and you may well catch yourself thinking “this could probably have been cut.”

Jonathan Hatfull, SciFiNow - Fresh

Yes, it’s probably half an hour too long. There is a whole section that feels out of kilter and harks back to the CGI naffness of the prequels — and is also virtually pointless to the plot.

Jamie East, The Sun (UK) - Fresh

The middle section loses its shape and is subject to longueurs.

Ian Freer, Empire Magazine - Fresh

The Last Jedi is the longest Star wars movie, and it does feel like it. The third act is a beating drum of moments that each seem like they could be a satisfying climax.

Susana Polo, Polygon - Fresh

Where the film falters is in its pacing. Even jumping between three storylines, there’s a lack of momentum at times as no one is really going anywhere. The Resistance fleet is crawling away from the First Order; Rey is in a stalemate with Luke on Ahch-To; and obviously things aren’t a breeze on Canto Bight. And yet the dramatic tension of the first two storylines hold up intact. The fleet storyline plays like the excellent Battlestar Galactica episode “33” and everything is Ahch-To is great because Johnson is doing some fascinating things with the character dynamics between Rey, Luke, and Kylo Ren. But the Canto Bight stuff is a bit of a drag, and then you feel it in final act of the film where, despite some amazing moments, you can’t shake the feeling that The Last Jedi is probably a bit too long even if it’s difficult to know what to cut.

Matt Goldberg, Collider - Fresh

There's a lot going on - too much. The film could have used a hard edit to lose about 20 minutes or more. Resistance ships explode and the fleet's fuel running low, but it doesn't keep us on the edges of our seats. Poe, Rey and Finn- the new heroes we're supposed to fall in love with - are uncharismatic and bland.

Julie Washington, Cleveland Plain Dealer - Fresh

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a long work of art that doesn't know when to quit

Scott Mendelson, Forbes - Fresh

If there's a problem, it's only that it's a little too long at two and a half hours (a first for the franchise), which might prove challenging for younger viewers. It turns out you can have too much of a good thing after all.

Matthew Turner, Hero Collector - Fresh

Tran is a rock-solid addition, but here, and elsewhere, one is reminded of the deftness of editing on both (yes, both) previous trilogies. Intercut sequences that moved swiftly in earlier films feel clumsy. Where once the passing of time was cannily implied yet compact on screen in, say, “Empire,” in “Last Jedi,” well ... you can fit a lot of movie into 152 minutes.

Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman - Fresh

But The Last Jedi’s two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico.

Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine - Rotten

Some tighter editing would have relieved most of my mid-movie tension — as well as my bladder concerns as “The Last Jedi” stretches to an unnecessarily long 151 minutes. If not for that spectacular final act, it would be tempting to refer to it as “The Lasts and Lasts and Lasts Jedi.”

Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal - Fresh

The Last Jedi is a whopping two-and-a-half hours, and it would have been much improved if an editor had taken a lightsaber to its less crucial sections.
To cut a long story short (and I wish Johnson had cut his own long story short): if you’re getting bored halfway through The Last Jedi, hang on in there. Just when you think it’s about to end, it really gets going.

Nicholas Barber, BBC.com - Fresh

For the first half of a punishingly long film, we repeatedly cut back to Star Wars Island where Rey is begging Luke to train her as a Jedi.

Donald Clarke Irish Times Rotten

There are times, however, when the wow factor and compelling character beats give way to the feeling that Johnson lost the run of himself with the film's duration, and that the longest adventure in Star Wars history really didn't need that distinction.

Harry Guerin, RTÉ (Ireland) - Fresh

Several characters remain underdeveloped, and appear as well dressed plot devices which contribute to an unevenness hard to justify in the 151 minutes running time.

Jon Lyus, HeyUGuys - Fresh

Even Johnson’s sense of fun and mischief can’t sustain the film for two-and-a-half hours; the warring gets boring. One scene is replayed three times with different interpretations but it’s hardly Rashomon and a movie this long can’t afford to dawdle. No one could mistake The Last Jedi for an outstanding contribution to cinema, or even to escapism, but it has its attractions.

Ryan Gilbey, New Statesman - Fresh
Indeed it does, Ryan. And that concludes part III. TL;DR:TLJ is TL.

This is my third list for this sub. I hope you enjoy it.
ART THIEVES, FORGERS, SMUGGLERS.
The Art of the Steal by Christopher Mason. A true story about the auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s and how they conspired to cheat their clients out of millions of dollars.
The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace. The most expensive bottle of wine and the conflicting reports about its history. This is a book that would enchant wine conessi… conues… lovers.
The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft by Ulrich Boser. Author Ulrich Boser looks at the unsolved art theft case of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant. Grant Hadwin, a logger-turned-activist, fells a unique 165 feet Sitka spruce in an act of protest. John Vaillant takes the readers into the heart of North America’s last great forest to find out why he did that.
Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures by Susan Ronald. Hildebrand Gurlitt was an art thief, or as he put it himself, an ‘official dealer’ for Hitler and Goebbels. But he stole from the Jews and Nazis alike. This book was published after his hoard was recently (2013) discovered which created an international furor.
The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art by Matthew Hart. This book is about the art theft at Ireland’s Russborough House in 1986. The suspect, a gangster named Martin Cahill, played cat and mouse with police for years.
The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey. When you think about stealing some valuable art, do maps come to your mind? Then this book is for you. Gilbert Joseph Bland Jr. stole numerous centuries-old maps from research libraries in US and Canada.
I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger by Frank Wynne. Han van Meegeren became so much adapt at forging Vermeer paintings that it is said that even professional experts would find it difficult to point out his works from the originals. He earned more than $50 million by selling his forgeries – and he even swindled the Nazis.
The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers by Bryan Christy. Reptile smuggling is a big “business”. The author, a federal agent, suspected a reptile business owner of being a major smuggler and he started investigating. It was not as simple as it sounds because at one point he was chased by a mother alligator and even bitten by a python.
The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece by Vernon Silver. A 2500 year old cup made by the Greek master Euphronios which depicted the fall of Troy gets stolen and sold (along with 3 other such vessels). Then due to the questionable practice of some art dealers, no one can track down its last known owner.
The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr. With nothing better to do, the author embarks on a journey to discover a Caravaggio painting which was lost to time two hundred years ago.
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett. John Charles Gilkey stole rare books not because he wanted to make profit as most thieves do, but because he loved books. I guess if you want to call yourself a book-reader but don’t actually want to say… read a book, you could just steal them and show them off to your friends. But who are we to question the wisdom of “booklovers”, right?
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean. If you thought that stealing maps is a weird “job” to have, how about stealing a rare breed of flower? We all know about the Tulipomania that gripped Netherlands in the 1630s. But this is a modern tale, and the book is perhaps one of the most popular ones on this list.
Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman, John Shiffman. This book is about Robert K. Wittman, FBI’s founder of the Art Crime Team and his undercover missions around the world to rescue various pieces of stolen art.
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury. You could have a Jackson Pollock lying around in your basement, but if you can’t prove that the piece is real, you might as well use it as a table cloth (I might have exaggerated there a bit, but you get the point). John Myatt, a struggling artist, and John Drewe, a conman who knew the importance of Provenance in the art world, duped many people and museums by creating a fake paper trial that seemed to prove that the art was a real thing and not a forgery. So much so that the experts believe that there might still be some fake paintings created by Myatt displayed in prominent places as the real thing.
The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick. Dolnick writes about the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994 and the subsequent investigation that took place to track it down.
Selling Hitler by Robert Harris In mid-eighties, Hitler’s diaries were “discovered” and many experts fell for the con. The backpeddling many did when it was revealed that the diaries were not real is really amusing to read about.
Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature’s Bounty by Craig Welch. This book is about the poaching of a larger-than-life clam – a Geoduck, to be precise, and the subsequent chase from the wildlife police to nab the poacher.
Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers and the Looting of the Ancient World by Roger Atwood. This book provides a sweeping history of thefts of various priceless antiques.
Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece by Noah Charney. The twelve panel oil-painting of the Mystic Lamb is the most frequently stolen artwork in the world. It was stolen 13 times. One wonders whether they could have guarded it a little better after the first couple of times, you know. Anyway, this book describes the events of each theft.
Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery by Jennie Erin Smith. Two reptile smugglers compete against each other to conquer the illegal trade for themselves. The funny thing is, the Zoos stood against them in the courts, but they had no problem buying rare fauna from the two smugglers, sometimes simultaneously.
Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California by Frances Dinkelspiel. A massive fire destroyed wines worth $250 million in a California warehouse, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. It was done by a conman named Mark Anderson, who rented storage space at the same warehouse. This book tells why he did that and also goes into the surprisingly bloody history of wine trade in California. (reads well with cranberry juice).
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti. On August 21, 1911, a man walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa tucked inside his coat (should have painted it bigger, eh Vinci?). I am not going to spoil this book for anyone. Read it if you want to know whether Mona Lisa was recovered or was lost to time forever.
CARTELS, GANGS, UNDERWORLD.
American Desperado: My Life --- From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset by Jon Roberts, Evan Wright. Jon Roberts, who starred in documentary Cocaine Cowboys tells his story to the journalist Evan Wright in this book. Roberts smuggled drugs to Miami for the Medellin Cartel (which will feature many times in this category).
At the Devil’s Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down the Cali Cartel by William C. Rempel. This is Narcos Season 3, basically. Remember the family guy who gets involved with the Cali Cartel and mops around for the whole season even though he had an unbelievably hot wife who was clearly out of his league? That character was based on Rempel. And if I must say so, the book is more compelling than that season of Narcos. Nothing can beat Agent Pena, though.
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr, Gerard O’Neill. The story of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger – the head of the Irish Mob in Boston - who became an informant for the FBI and chaos ensued. Depp plays Whitey Bulger in the movie adaptation with a soggy tortilla glued to his face as make-up.
Blow: How a Small -Town Bay Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost it All by Bruce Porter. Another book where Johnny Depp plays the main character in the movie adaptation. This book is about George Jung, who after meeting Carlos Lehder, started selling cocaine in the United States through Medellin Cartel.
Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare by Paul Keany, Jeff Farrell. Paul Keany was caught smuggling half-a-million euro worth of cocaine into Venezuela. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Now, prisons everywhere aren’t exactly fun places to be, but Los Teques where Keany was incarcerated was nothing short of hell on earth.
Confessions of a Yakuza by Junichi Saga. Junichi Saga was a doctor by profession. A patient, who was a former Yakuza, recounted his life story before him. Saga recorded the conversations, and broke doctor-patient confidentiality by writing this book.
Doctor Dealer: The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire by Mark Bowden. A dentist named Larry Lavin builds the foundation for a cocaine empire in the United States.
Donnie Brasco by Joseph D. Pistone, Richard Woodley. Joseph D. Pistone, an FBI agent, goes undercover for six years to infiltrate the Mafia. Do watch the movie too, it is Depp’s last movie without weird make-up.
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo. Journalist Ioan Grillo has written, arguably, the definitive book on Mexican drug cartels. Why he is still alive is anybody’s guess.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh. Venkatesh, who was a sociology grad student at the time, infiltrated one of Chicago’s most notorious gangs. This is one of a kind type of book.
Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. This book is about the Italian Crime Network called Camorra in Naples, Italy. Due to his intensive investigative journalism which exposed lot of insider information about the crime syndicate, author Saviano still has to live under constant police protection.
The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World’s Most Powerful Mafia by Alex Perry. This is a recent book, where the author Alex Perry looks inside the ruthless Calabrian Mafia of Italy and three women who want to save their own and their children’s lives. This is a fascinating and courageous look into an aspect of the Mafia which is often overlooked by most.
Hunting El Chapo: The Inside Story of the American Lawman Who Captured the World’s Most Wanted Drug-Lord by Andrew Hogan, Douglas Century. Remember when Joaquin Guzman was caught for the first time and then he escaped and then he was caught again for good? Yes? Then read this one. But this book only focuses on the operation that nabbed him for the first time. I must warn you though – the author, Andrew Hogan – is really really in love with himself and it seeps into his writing.
The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel by Robert Mazur. Mazur went undercover and actually became a money launderer for Pablo Escobar. This book is more about how bankers actively helped to launder the drug money and how Mazur helped to bring them down.
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw by Mark Bowden. This is the best book about tracking and eventually killing Pablo Escobar. And as Walter Jr. pointed out to Walter White, it focuses on the good guys, not the bad ones. Good companion book to Pablo Escobar: My Father written by Escobar’s son.
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail by Rusty Young. The author stays inside San Pedro jail for months with a drug smuggler to chronicle his tale. This is one of the most popular books written on cocaine smuggling.
McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny. This is a thorough investigation into organized crime worldwide which accounts for 1/5th of total GDP of the world. This book would please readers who are into extensively researched true-crime history books, not so much a casual reader (inb4 - I just read 5 pages of McMafia and wow… just wow).
Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker. Edward Bunker had had an eventful life. Incarceration for two and a half decades, being on FBI’s most wanted list, and being a crime novelist. This is his autobiography.
Mr. Nice by Howard Marks. Howard Marks started dealing dope in small quantities while he was studying at Oxford – as you do – and then eventually graduated to dealing it in tons (what the hell was he studying there? Oh, philosophy). This is his fascinating story.
Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers by Anabel Hernandez. Yet another book that resulted in the author getting death threats. This proves the old cliché true that the pen is mightier than the sword; until the sword comes down and cuts your neck. That’s why the author has to live under constant protection.
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright. Any aspiring drug lords should read this instruction manual. Just kidding. Wainwright goes deep into the functioning of various drug cartels and at the end also comes up with a plan to defeat them.
News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Little known author tries his hand at true-crime. Pablo Escobar kidnapped 10 journalists when he was on the run from the authorities. This book revolves around that event.
The Night it Rained Guns: Unravelling the Purulia Arms Drop Conspiracy by Chandan Nandy. On a December night in 1995, someone airdropped three weapons-laden wooden pallets over Purulia, West Bengal. Who did it and why? This book tells the story about one of India’s greatest ever security breaches.
No Angel: My Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns, Nils Johnson-Shelton. Dobyns was the first federal agent to infiltrate the inner circle of the notorious biker gang. This is his story.
Pablo Escobar: My Father by Juan Pablo Escobar. Juan Pablo is an architect and lives and practices his trade in Argentina. Even though Pablo was his father, Juan does not try to justify his actions even a little bit. This is one of the best books written on Pablo Escobar.
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe. Sister Ping, leader of the Chinese underworld in the US, earned $40 million a year smuggling people from China. Told from the viewpoints of gangsters, investigators, and poor immigrants alike, this book provides a unique window into the world of human smuggling.
Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History by Michael D. Blutrich. I am disappointed that they went with FBI instead of Federal Bureau of Investigation in the title. Should have made it longer. Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City on the 34th Street Just Opposite the Starbucks, Was Extorted out of 4.54 Millions and 55 Cents Plus Taxes by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in Federal Bureau of Investigation History by Michael Dostoyevsky Blutrich
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein. The author, working as a reporter in Japan, writes about the seedy underbelly of crime in the country.
The Untouchables by Eliot Ness, Oscar Fraley. Where’s Nitty? He’s in the car. Great movie. How Eliot Ness and his team started the downward spiral in criminal career of Al Capone. A somewhat embellished account was also written in the book, but nonetheless, it is a gripping tale.
Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand by K. Vijay Kumar. Koose Muniswamy Veerappan was the last big outlaw of India. A sandalwood smuggler who lived in the forest to evade the police, Veerappan killed hundreds of policemen and civilians. K. Vijay Kumar, the officer who led the task force that ultimately brought down the brigand, is the author of this book.
Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi. I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? Goodfellas is perhaps the best Mafia movie ever made, so read it in his own words why Pileggi might fold under questioning.
Zero Zero Zero by Roberto Saviano, Virginia Jewiss. This Saviano guy must have a death wish. But as a handsome list-writer once eloquently said, “If bitten already by a King Cobra, what difference it makes if you French kiss a Black Mamba?” Since the publication of his book on the Italian crime syndicate, Saviano has to live under constant police protection. So to make sure they don’t slack off, he wrote a book on Cocaine Cartel, this time acquiring lots of admirers in Latin America.
CONMEN, IMPOSTORS.
The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kersten. The Art of making money is to make other people work for you; not the other way round. But more scrupulous method of making money would be to counterfeit it. Art Williams did exactly that.
Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale. Maybe the most popular book on this list, Abagnale Jr.’s book is not to be missed even if you have watched the movie starring the actor who had sex with a bear (no, not Tormund).
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock. One “Dr.” John R. Brinkley, set-up a medical practice to surgically insert goat glands in human testicles to restore their fading sex drive. I am not joking, this happened.
Conman: A Master Swindler’s Own Story by J. R. Weil, W. T. Brannon. Known as “Yellow Kid” Weil was a master conman, who duped public of more than $8 million 100 years ago. He’s called by many as the greatest conman of all time (second to the companies that charge service fees on the internet, of course).
Eyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist by Peter Fenton. Fenton was a math student until he turned into a carnival con artist. How many bananas he stole from the monkeys? How many bales of potatoes from the elephants? Read this book to find out.
Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise. If you have any annoying friends who romanticize the Victorian era and say that they would have liked to live there, tell them to read this book and get back to you after that.
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal. This is the true story of one of the greatest impostors of all time. The man could have impersonated a chihuahua if he wanted to.
The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower by James Francis Johnson. Viktor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower not once, but twice. I still have the relevant papers that my great grandfather left us. I’m going to shift it to Nauru or Detroit.
The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con by Amy Reading. This is a revenge story of a man who sets out to con the conmen who conned him twice. Unfortunately, the book could have been written better, but it is still worth having a look at.
Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood. I once tried playing dead in a meeting when asked about the progress on my project. But there are people who fake their death for lesser gains, such as insurance fraud and debt fraud. Author Elizabeth Greenwood journeys into the dark world of death fraud to find out more.
Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend by Mitchell Zuckoff. Charles Ponzi was so successful in duping people that we have immortalized his name by terming such swindles after him. At one point, he was raking in $2 millions a week. How many weeks would it take you to earn 2 million dollars at your current income? (sorry, that got heavy fast. It hurt me too).
A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud by Karl Sabbagh. One botanist claimed that some species of plants on the islands south of Scotland survived the last Ice Age. Another botanist doubted him. This might not sound like a big fraud if you are not into plants, but believe me when I say that the 2 botanists who just read this threw their phones away in disgust and disbelief.
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest by Gregg Olsen. A quack doctor named Linda Hazard developed a technique called “fasting treatment”. The story focuses on two sisters who fell for the quack’s assurances that they would be cured of all the diseases - real or imagined. This book is quite infuriating to read. Hazard was a despicable human being.
Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats by Bee Wilson. Wilson looks from ancient Rome to current times for food frauds. And she finds them aplenty (companion read - while having a nice snack).
A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History’s Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes and Frauds by Michael Farquhar. This is a good bathroom book about fakers through history.
The Woman Who Wasn’t There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception by Robin Gaby Fisher, Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr. Have you heard about Tania Head? If you haven’t, I urge you to skip this book. Tania Head duped survivors of 9/11 and the whole world alike into believing that she was one of the survivors from the South Tower of World Trade Center. I feel enraged just by typing this. So just read this book if you want to know more about her. There are a couple of documentaries out there too.
HACKERS.
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll. Long before internet became a place for cat memes, Cliff Stoll was working at a research lab as a systems manager. One day he found 75 cents of accounting error. This made him alert that an unauthorized person was logging into the system. Thus began his lone effort of tracking down the spy.
Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley. Before there was internet, or even personal computers, mobsters and teenagers hacked the telephone system.
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon. The book tells the story of one of the best hackers of all times, Kevin Mitnick, and his cat and mouse game with the FBI.
The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History by David Enrich. A group of bankers manipulated daily interest rates just a fraction here and there on loans worth trillions of dollars and made some serious cash for themselves. This book also rocks one of the ugliest book covers of 2017.
MUTINEERS, PIRATES, OUTLAWS.
Batavia’s Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History’s Bloodiest Mutiny by Mike Dash. I was torn whether to include this book in the list as the history of Batavia’s mutiny is littered with corpses. But as the focus is on the mutiny, I am going to keep it here. This event could give the Medusa’s raft a run for its money.
The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and its Cargo of Female Convicts by Sian Rees. Poor girls in England, most of who were petty thieves, were given a chance to sail to Botany Bay in Australia to create a new life for themselves and the male population of New South Wales. But the real story happened at the sea on board the ship Lady Julian.
The Last Outlaws: The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by Thom Hatch. Butch: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful. Guard: People kept robbing it. Butch: Small price to pay for beauty. The book might not be full of memorable dialogues as the movie, but if you want to know more about the legendary outlaws, give this book a chance.
Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed by Kathy Marks. Mutiny of the Bounty is perhaps the most infamous of mutinies that occurred at sea. Even after the event and hundreds of years later, the descendants of Fletcher Christian and his sailors continue to live a crime-filled life like their forefathers on Pitcairn Island.
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks. This book will change your perception of Captain Kidd, that’s for sure.
To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner. This non-fiction book concentrates on Sheriff Pat Garrett’s chase in pursuit of the bandit Billy the Kid. If you like reading westerns, this one and The Last Outlaws are not to be missed.
Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly. Cordingly takes a look at life among the pirates. Some of your romanticism would be squashed, but there were some good things about being a pirate too. Life among the pirates was neither black nor white; it was beige.
POLITICAL CRIMES
Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History by Guy Lawson. Three kids won a 300 million dollar contract – legitimately – I must add, to supply ammunition to the Afghanistan military. They had no money, but still they almost pulled it off. I don’t know, read this book, and if you’re a US citizen, visit the websites mentioned in the book, see if they are still doing business the same way, and if you want, you can become a supplier to the army too. Don’t forget to send me my cut (the movie War Dogs was trash).
The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair by Sam Roberts. Even if you’re not a United Statian of American (USians?), chances are you might have read at least something about the execution of the Rosenberg couple as spies. This is probably the best book about the subject.
Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Man Behind Them: How America Went to War in Iraq by Bob Drogin. How many weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq? If your answer is “what’s that?” then congratulations, you’re not unlike one of your former presidents. Who told the USians that there were WMDs with Saddam? Curveball.
The Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. Perkins was an economic hitman, who at the instruction of US intelligence agencies and giant corporations cajoled and blackmailed other country leaders to serve US foreign policy and award lucrative contracts to American businesses (now that job has been transferred to the White House).
A Kim Jong – Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power by Paul Fischer. Say you want to make a big movie for your country. But there is no one in your country who can handle such an ambitious project. What do you do? Hire some talent from other country? But you’re Kim Jong – Il. Oh. Then you just kidnap them, and force them to make the glorious movie of yours. Read this book. It’s pretty absurd (the movie they eventually made for Kim was utter shit. The Room would look like Gone with the Wind compared to that abomination).
The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets… And How We Could Have Stopped Him by Douglas Frantz, Catherine Collins. One day a man Abdul Qadeer Khan caught a plane to Pakistan from Europe. With him he had blueprints of the mechanism that could prepare weapons grade Uranium that he had stolen from the lab he worked at in the last 3 years. He would make the first atomic bomb for Pakistan with that information. Then he sold the tech to stable countries like Iran, North Korea and Libya. How can someone get away with stealing such powerful information? Read this book to find out.
Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen. This is a pretty controversial topic that has only gained wider acknowledgement in recent decades. Read this book to know in detail how bogus the claims of justice being served to the perpetrators of the Holocaust were. Basically, if you were a scientist, you were very likely to be acquitted from any War Crimes allegations.
The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina by Uki Goni. How did most of the Nazis who managed to escape from Germany ended up in South America? Read about the collusion of various entities and institutions that made it possible in this book.
The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. This is the true story of a mole in FBI, how he attempted to sell classified information and how FBI tried to track him down.
ROBBERIES, HEISTS.
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein. If there is one thief in this list that I admire, it is without a doubt, Attila Ambrus. Ambrus was known as a gentleman thief, who would ask – no, request - the teller to fill his bag with money. If you read this book, it would be hard for you to dislike Attila even though he was a thief.
Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason, Lee Gruenfeld. Bill Mason looted many famous personalities in his long career as a jewel thief. In this book he tells how he did it.
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk W. Johnson. Do you know there are people whose hobby is fly tying? The feathery thing that you attach to the hook to catch fish? But these are not your average fly tiers. They use feathers from exotic birds to create different ties whose total cost could run in thousands of dollars. Moreover, many of the most coveted birds are either protected or extinct. So one night a man named Edwin Rist broke into Tring museum and took hundreds of bird skins, some that belonged to Darwin, to fuel his hobby and even getting rich by selling precious feathers to other tiers. Don’t miss this book.
Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million by Mark Bowden. Who hasn’t dreamt of finding a big bag of money? It couldn’t have happened to a more clueless person. Joey Coyle, to be exact.
Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby. The theft from Antwerp that still raises many questions.
Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn. The truth is not that romantic.
The Great Pearl Heist: London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace by Molly Caldwell Crosby. Pearls, more valuable than the Hope Diamond, are stolen by thieves in Edwardian London.
The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. My favorite Crichton book. Stealing gold from a running train! Watch the movie too that stars the great Sean Connery.
Heist: The Oddball Crew Behind the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft by Jeff Diamant. How hard is it to steal 17 million dollars? As far as these thieves were concerned, not much. Getting away with it was another thing altogether. The movie was pretty average, I think.
Into the Blast: The True Story of DB Cooper by Skipp Porteous, Robert Blevins. Is Tommy Wiseau DB Cooper? If only that was true. Read the book but don’t expect any clear-cut answers (I think most people would agree that the clumsy bastard died after he jumped from the plane).
A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York by Timothy J. Gilfoyle. True story of George Appo, a pickpocket living in nineteenth-century New York.
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History by Ben Mezrich. A guy steals moon rocks from NASA and then had sex on them with his girlfriend (how the hell is that comfortable?)
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. The last hermit was not a hermit in true sense. He didn’t rely on land to feed himself. He stole from the nearby community. Before someone says I have spoiled the book for them, it is revealed in the first chapter that he is a thief.
WHITE COLLAR CRIMES.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. The Steve Jobs impersonator, Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, and her old boyfriend, Sunny, are some of the most vile people that I have come across while reading about corporate crime. This is one of the best books that I have read this year.
Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart. This is probably the most famous book written about those Wall Street scoundrels.
Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation by Dean Jobb. The story of Leo Koretz, who created one of the longest running Ponzi schemes in the 1920s Chicago.
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald. Mark Whitacre becomes an FBI informant against his own corporation. But as time goes by, the FBI starts to realize that Mark is not as truthful as he seems to be, and he has his own agenda (they made a movie with Matt Damon).
Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con by Guy Lawson. Sam Israel’s hedge fund was making heavy losses. So naturally, he fabricated fake returns to fool the investors. Then he heard about a secret market from where he could convert his millions into billions. That’s how he lost the last 150 million dollars of his invertors’ money.
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder. Only thing you are going to learn from this book is don’t do business in Russia.
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind. Bethany McLean asked one simple question in her article when everyone else was going gaga over Enron. “What does Enron actually do?” Nobody knew. Even Enron couldn’t give a specific answer. They were not just committing accounting fraud; they were looting ordinary people by creating fake shortage of electricity and driving the prices high. The documentary is worth watching too.
Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony by Gary Stephen Ross. The guy Molony debited huge amounts of money from the bank he worked at to feed his gambling addiction. Oh, and he took the money in other people’s name who held huge accounts there. This is one of the best true-crime books that I have ever read.
Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way by Jon Krakauer. You know the man who builds schools in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan? Great guy, right? Krakauer doesn’t think so. And he’ll tell you why in this short book.
The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques. 65 billion dollars. That’s the amount that Madoff swindled from people through decades of fraud. I think I can buy a small island country with this much money. The idiot is in jail though. I don’t know, maybe after a couple of billion, skip to a country with no extradition treaty and live the rest of your life without the fear of being getting caught? But then, these types of people don’t know when to stop.
OTHER.
American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside Down --- My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off World’s Casinos by Richard Marcus. The guy ripped-off casinos all over the world by stealing gaming chips while maintaining an illusion of a highroller to lend his eventual take required legitimacy.
Breaking the Rock: The Great Escape from Alcatraz by Jolene Babyak. Written by the daughter of a guard at Alcatraz, this book tells the story of the infamous escape from the prison island. Don’t forget to watch the classic movie too.
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich. The movie 21 was based on this book. But if you want to know the real story, without the whitewashing, you have no choice but to read this book.
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales. Kevin Bales estimates that there are 27 million people worldwide who live as slaves, right now. And yes, slavery still exists in United States of America in case you were wondering. This is a depressing book.
Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison by T. J. Parsell. Rape in prison is absolutely overlooked almost everywhere. Read this book if you can endure reading about helplessness page after page.
Hotel K: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali’s Most Notorious Jail by Kathryn Bonella. Prison systems in developing world differ from the developed one in one regard that the guards and officials there are more corrupt and hence are likely to look the other way when something bad is going down amongst the inmates. Kerobokan Jail in Bali is one of the worst among those.
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley. The author interviewed inmates from Leavenworth Prison for two years. The book is the result of that labor.
The Laundrymen: Inside the World’s Third Largest Business by Jeffrey Robinson. I have a perfect idea to launder money. Laser Tag! Robinson looks at the third largest business in the world. The book was published a while ago, but still hasn’t lost most of its relevancy.
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer. Jon releases the Krakauer on one of the most relevant subjects of today. Rapes in colleges. These institutes would do anything to sweep things under the rug to maintain the illusion of clean image in the public eye.
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover. The author worked as a prison guard for a year at one of the most notorious prisons of the United States. This book is about his experience.