STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs
Retired detective Eddie Burns (Ving Rhames) is called back in to action when his young sister Kassie (Kerry Washington) is abducted by a sinister criminal named Charlie Strom (Gary Oldman).She's found fairly swiftly though,returned in one piece despite having been subjected to an horrific rape ordeal.As Burns sets out to seek justice for his sister,it emerges Strom is as eager to set up a meeting with Burns as he is with him,as he has some business of his own with the detective,in the shape of an unsettled score.
As I watched this dismal feature plod on,I was woken up to a fact I've chosen to overlook for a while now:Rhames really ain't that great an actor.In some of his other,more bearable features (in which he co-stars) his problems with delivery and tone are something I don't tend to notice,but when he's carrying the film,he ends up coming out in his true colours.As for Oldman,it's really a case of how the mighty have fallen,his once commanding presence in films of real vitality and inspiration now reduced to corny,hackneyed psycho turns such as his co starring role here.The plot is an uneven,patchy mess that dabbles in overtures of the ridiculous that by the time the laughably silly,clumsily self conscious ending has rolled by,have (ahem!) swallowed the film whole.*
