A puzzle box for the ages: seemingly deceptively simple on the surface — it is, after all, the story of a man who succumbs to madness, eventually running amok while spending a winter with his family in isolation — but there’s more than one method of opening The Shining's myriad doors.

What I’ll say is there are few films, horror or otherwise, which effectively portray white male hysteria and the terrifying upshots of such behavior. The movie refuses to explicate…

"I'm a cop. You're a drug trafficker. I didn't betray you; I busted you."

First-rate entertainment, and with some profound social commentary (which will be further inspected upon a necessary rewatch) underneath it all. Full proof that meat-and-potato crime/thriller outings aren't synonymous with Z-grade filmic idiocy punctuated by killer one-liners. (Although Captain Zhang's quote [see above] is pretty sick!) Taking the simple premise of a drug lord evading execution by assisting a police unit in taking down fellow drug barons,…