Step right up! Don’t be shy! I'm the proprietor of this here Ferris wheel and I promise you—even though we are in the third act of this middling action film—I assure you that there is no better place to be than in a rickety metal porch swing slowly ascending to the sky!
C’mon, you have the tickets! Use them! Sure, you’ve seen some strange occurrences around your small midwestern town lately—key witnesses in local trials have been disappearing, multiple municipal buildings have exploded, and 50-car pile-ups in the downtown area have become a semi-regular occurrence—so you may be worried about what’s next, but where better to keep an eye on your town than from 67 feet in the air, atop a rotating hoop of human bodies held to a tower by a single rusty linchpin?
DeSoto and his band of merry eco-terrorists can’t reach you from up here, I promise.
You want to go on the tilt-a-whirl instead? Do you really think a ride that most grade schoolers find dull is the best way to enter the third act of a piece of media that is sure to be beloved by someone’s dad? No! You need a spectacle! A demonstration of human ingenuity and a symbol of Americana!
Plus, DeSoto is afraid of heights. Remember when our deranged antagonist told that really long story about his dad getting mad at him when he was young because he was too afraid to ride to the top of the Empire State Building? You probably thought it was extraneous dialogue to pad this movie's 70-minute runtime, but it was, in fact, foreshadowing. DeSoto will be stopped dead in his tracks when he spots the same circular curiosity that amazed attendees at the 1904 World’s Fair. You’ll see!
Go ahead and plop into one of my gum-crusted pods of color and light and give audiences what they deserve! Give yourself what you deserve! You’ve spent the last two acts going against your captain’s orders by investigating that shadowy nightclub owned by Carmine DeSoto (A.K.A. the Acrophobic of Alcatraz). You deserve to recharge with your sweetie on the most romantic attraction within smelling distance of the petting zoo.
Good things happen on Ferris wheels sometimes! This is the same ride where Ryan Gosling adorably coerced Rachel McAdams into dating him by dangling from the spokes and threatening that she witness his own brutal suicide. That was fun, right? I know you’ve spent most of the film slowly unraveling a mystery that was pretty obvious to everyone else by minute 30, but maybe, after all is said and done, this might be an opportunity for you to meet your Ryan Gosling. You never know!
What’s the worst that could happen? You’ll witness another horrific act of mayhem and—like the last two times you went toe-to-toe with DeSoto—you’ll be caught remarkably off guard? That DeSoto will be able to easily disarm me before I can stop the Ferris wheel and then his goons will scale the rim of the wheel and you’ll be a sitting duck, forced to climb the swinging metal to escape, where said goons will dramatically slip to their deaths because you resourcefully coated the handlebars with popcorn butter? That DeSoto will mumble, “Do I have to do everything myself?” and then gesture the sign of the cross before ascending nervously up to your level? That the vertical supports will give way and you and the world’s most dangerous mob boss will freewheel around the fairgrounds as casually and as improbable as a meatball propelled by a young child’s sneeze?
Yes, these would all make sense for the third act of this movie—if they weren’t so obvious. There’s no way our thoughtful producers are going to recycle set pieces that revolve around an old-timey ride that underwhelms children and the elderly.
So hand that oversized stuffed bear to your nerdy “friend” Dave and head on up to the gate! Hurry up now, this movie ends in 20 minutes, and to be brutally honest, I think it’s going straight to Peacock.