The camera slowly pans over the mountains and glides over a bathroom sink as we gently drop down to eye level like a soap bubble. Welcome to the B.S. world of cinematography when you get a European director doing a North American action flick.
Listen, you can put silk panties on a sow if you want but it still looks like a pig to me.
I don’t want my action films to look like outtakes from a National Geographic special on airborne bacteria in the bathroom, ok Pierre?
As usual Bruce Willis is a former hostage negotiator who had one of his cases go horribly wrong and now he’s now retired from the biz. It’s like the season opener to every episode of 24!! Just once wouldn’t it be nice if these guys were good at their jobs and still employed at them? It always seems to be a retired cop/firefighter/bomb disposal agent who gets pulled back into his old profession because he happened to be eating lunch at the wrong place, or knows someone who is in danger (family, former coworker, lover) or just happens to be on the airplane when stuff goes down.
Note to self, never go on vacation with Bruce Willis. The moped will have microfilm in the gas tank.
In this instance Bruce is the chief of police in a small town (hey, at least he’s not an unemployed alcoholic like I was expecting) and for reasons unexplained 3 teenagers decide to pursue a luxury SUV to it’s gated high security home in an attempt to steal it.
If I see one more scene in a movie where people are scaling a wall just as the guy sitting in front of the security camera looks away I’m going to hurl. What’s the point in having the $50,000 security system if you have to put a coffee addicted non blinking schmuck in front of it 24/7? They always seem to be tying their shoes when the bad guy splices in the fake security tape anyway.
Here’s an idea. Might I suggest that you put a spiky fence around your property? How about a yappy poodle? A light with a motion detector on the back porch?
Anyway, apparently the rich family not only have an easily scaled wall, but they don’t have locks on their doors because as soon as you can say “first plot point” the teens have walked into the house, beaten the father and killed a police officer who showed up to investigate their abandoned pick up truck on the side of the road. How’s THAT for 5 action packed minutes?
Now, if I had just broken into a house and was terrorizing a family at gunpoint the last thing I’d do would be to gun down a cop on the doorstep. It really tends to tick the neighbours off and you’ll never get a pizza delivered as long as there is a corpse laying around out there. The kids today have no sense. I hear that Texas now offers a high school credit called “Shooting Cops-Bad-101″
If you were thinking that this would be a very similar movie to “The Negotiator” you’re half right. The rich guy does happen to have some information that the baddies want but instead of trying to kill him, they kidnap Bruce Willis’ family and force him to retrieve an encrypted DVD with some overseas banking information on it.
Let’s discuss some holes in the old plot shall we?
In this house there is an extensive series of office building style ductwork running throughout the premises that the youngest urchin seems to enjoy playing inside of. In fact, our young Indian Jones has built himself a veritable tree house inside complete with Christmas lights, comic books and ladders.
How did the builders explain to the owner that the 4000 sq ft house he paid for has only 3000 sq ft of living space but you could park a Hum Vee in between the living room’s walls? How much air conditioning does this house need? Are they barbecuing a water buffalo in there? It looks like they bought the air conditioning unit from a garage sale at the Aliens 4 movie lot. Secondly why are air ducts always back lit with a blue light? Who puts a lighting unit in their ductwork? And another thing… where’s the freaking dust? Would it have killed them to sprinkle a bit of talc in there? Come on, at least make it a LITTLE dirty. Also, this kid has the run of the house. He pops out of said ductwork into his sister’s room (could be a bit embarrassing if she had just finished showering eh?) as well as (and this is the beast part) his dad’s panic room. That’s right, dad has a room with a 2 way mirror, bullet proof glass, and a large vault like door but there’s a man sized vent above his shoe tree that can be accessed from anywhere in the house. Oh details… details…
Then there’s the fact that Junior knows the combination to his father’s gun box. You know, I always tell my 8 year old the whereabouts of my personal “hand cannons” just in case he wants to blast a few sparrows in the back yard.
Now, let me ask you another question. If you had a group of fake FBI agents why would you bother kidnapping the Chief of Police’s family? They even go so far as to tell him to take over the hostage negotiations but not to enter the house. Why not just send you goons in and bypass the whole Chief of Police anyway? This part made no sense to me. At first I thought they needed to get a man in the house (i.e Bruce) but when they showed up with a crew of 10 guys with machine guns, armored vehicles and night vision goggles I was a bit confused. It’s like asking your 5 year old daughter to make butter sandwiches for everyone until Martha Stewart shows up with her smoked salmon croquettes.
The last 20 minutes is a mess of slow motion explosions and preposterous action scenes as one of the crazy teens starts taking out the trained assassins in full body armour while the house burns to the ground.
As far as action movies goes, it’s still better than a Dolph Lungren flick but I’d wait for the rental.
