Refém Rebelde

1 out of 5 stars.

Horrible and dumb. Dumb plot. Action is horrible. Acting is tedious. Script is filled with dumb characters and just flat out terrible.

Here's another example of hiring big-name actors to entice the viewer to see a really bad film. And was it ever bad.

I get that it's newb writer Mickey Solis' first full length film screenplay, but there's no excuse to take a simple generic genre, and chop it up into incoherent nonsense where the action was laughable, and the dialogue cringe-worthy. "What's that? A bomb (over the door)". *still opens door* "be careful". Uggggh. The story lacked continuity and basic logic. The normally comfortable 93 minute runtime felt like 2+ hours with the slow pacing and dragged out filler scenes for the little amount of substance the (convoluted) story had.

What's even worse, is that you have producer and seasoned director Jon Keeyes quarterback this entire nonsense. I've seen first time amateur directors produce a film 100x better. He horribly directed the scenes, camera work, and failed miserably in directing his cast. The cinematography was bad, and the score on the worst side of the b-film grade spectrum. The sound felt distant, as if someone forgot the boom mics.

I want to say that perhaps if some of the high-paid actor budget was used to have a seasoned filmmaker go over the amateur screenplay for edits to improve it, but a seasoned director (Keeyes) could/should have fixed this mess. I feel bad for Gibson and Malkovich having this flop on their resume. It's a very generous 4/10 from me, all going to the star leads who did their best with what they had to work with.

When I sat down to watch the 2021 action thriller "Rogue Hostage", it was because the movie have John Malkovich on the cast list. Yeah, I hadn't even heard about the movie prior to getting to sit down to watch it.

I am by no account a fan of Tyrese Gibson's acting skills, so having him in the lead role here was not the main attraction for me. When I saw that the movie also had Michael Jai White on the cast list, I must admit that I found it to be looking brighter for the movie.

But let me just say right away that "Rogue Hostage" was a tedious affair of a movie. It was bland and generic, offering absolutely nothing new to the action thriller genre. And everything that took place in the storyline is something that have been done and seen before in other movies, and more often than not, also done better than it was here.

The storyline was just plainly generic and predictable. So this is essentially a movie where you just lean back, disconnect your brain and watch the screen. And trust me, once the movie comes to an end, you will forget about the entire ordeal.

"Rogue Hostage" was a swing and a miss from writer Mickey Solis and director Jon Keeyes.

I am rating "Rogue Hostage" a generous three out of ten stars.

Kyle Snowden (Fast & Furious' Tyrese Gibson) is struggling with many life challenges. As war veteran, suffering from PTSD, who is also a single parent, he is now sucked into a family / hostage situation. Can he save the day? But don't kid yourself, this is not a 'die hard' rehash. Not even close.

Obviously this is a B-grade movie. CGI and special effects on this one are laughable, at this level they should have changed the story so that they don't need to overlay explosions and fires in such a bad way. The acting is also B-grade level (including J Malkovich that seem to be doing somebody a favor and acting even worse than his usual self) but the real cardinal sin here is that the movie is boring and the script is over-chewed not to say idiotic at times.

There is really no saving grace for this movie. There are some small sparks like a couple of scenes with the kid, Manny, but those get overrun by total disgracing of the marines, PTSD patients, the social workers, politicians, police and what have you. It falls in a great shame to "Run, Hide, Fight (2020)" which also don't have any big stars in it, but at least is portraying a possible story and relatable characters in a similar environment. If you have a chance, watch that one instead, it is much less of a time waster.

I would not fault anybody with rating this 1 star, but for an honest review I would rate this 34 / 100, it's watchable but not much more than that.

Tyrese Gibson was great in bby boy, 4 Brothers, waist deep, Legion, The Take, and all the F&F movies. This was not one of his better movies. The acting felt forced and sometimes very fake. No real emotional connection between any of the other actors. Which was sad because a few of them were well known. I swear I could have done a better job just winging it. I will not recommend this one to anyone and I myself will never see it again. Not even if I had extra time one my hands. 4 is me being extremely generous!