Sem Lei

Well this type of genre, i.e action, crime, heist is right up my street. Add Bruce Willis to the frame and you would think that I was onto a winner. Unfortunately this was not the case. I found the film to be poorly directed, the acting wooden and the storyline predictable if slightly erratic. After reading the synopsis I kind of thought I would be in for a decent hour and a half. I found myself dropping off 55 minutes into the film which for an action film is pretty poor. Of course, I say action but the truth is there was very little action in it. Add to it a strange religious undertone which I suppose is to signify the lead role is looking for redemption and you get a complete mismatch/ conflict of interests. I give it a generous four out of ten but take into consideration this is about the lowest I have ever scored a film.

In Detroit, Sonny (50 Cent), Vincent Long (Ryan Phillippe) and Dave Hall (Brett Granstaff) are friends since high-school. They reunite to successfully heist 5 million dollars in diamonds in a daring operation. However, Sonny and Dave are betrayed by Vincent that shots them and steel the diamonds.

Sonny miraculously saves and seeks revenge against Vincent. Meanwhile the owner of the diamonds sends a hit-man to find Sonny and Vincent while the powerful mobster Biggs (Bruce Willis) forces Sonny to steal 2 million dollars from a Russian mafia. Sonny seeks out Vincent not only to revenge, but also to get rid off Biggs and his gangsters.

"Setup" is a disappointing film with a poor screenplay. Bruce Willis, Ryan Phillippe and James Remar have minor participations and the character of 50 Cent is not well developed with an ambiguous personality. The director Mike Gunther makes another weak rip-off of Guy Ritchie's style and this comedy-action movie does not work. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Sem Lei" ("Without Law")

Seeing it had a good cast I thought this could be a good film, wrong! It's just a over hyped B grader by using a few big name actors, sure Ryan Phillippe is in it here and there but Bruce Willis is in it only for the name, as he is in this film for around 20 minutes, Bruce is only in it to prop up this film. 50 cents is just not credible as an actor, and Bruce and Ryan can't help him raise the bar past the level of B grade.

The story is nothing new, it's predictable and plain boring, and that music score! they are really trying to make this sound like a serious crime drama, but they failed, it just proves again it takes more then well know actors to make a good film.

Would I recommend this film? yeah sure if I did not like you! give it a miss, walk your dog instead, wash your car, ring your mum! as this film is not worth wasting your time on.

Solid 1 out of 10, it would have been a zero but I did love that GTO, the main high light of the film.

The screenplay feels like a teenager wrote it, who learned to cuss by his wangster older brother, and now uses his overly foul language in the most inappropriate situations.

On top of the horrific acting and terrible dialogue, the characters seem to feel the need to describe what they're doing as their doing it. And hey 50-cent, it's called pronunciation, try it!

The plot can't decide what type of action movie it wants to be. It feels like the writers just strung a series of their favorite movie scenes from all their favorite movies randomly together. There is no action leading to the next action, just 50 running around sticking a gun in everyone's face and explaining the plot over and over again.

Question: WHY ARE ALL THE CHARACTERS EXPLAINING TO ME WHAT I'M WATCH?! Answer: it's a dumbed-down movie for those people who are always asking questions during a movie.

Oh and the music sucks, sounds like stock music or the temp soundtrack was never changed.

OK, so I didn't have particularly high expectations for this, and I'm not going to bother emphasising Curtis Jackson's flat performance, since it's likely you've seen how "expressive" this guy is in everything else he's ever done, as it is, if I know he's in a movie, I already have a pretty good clue that he won't be the highlight.

So what else have we got? Ryan Phillippe, and Bruce Willis... OK, Bruce pulls out a reasonable performance, but he really doesn't have much to work with, due to a muddled, thin script.

So of course the same difficulties apply to Ryan Phillippe, however, since he has a much larger part in this it's difficult to see that his performance is OK, and really he's let down by the poor script.

Well, look, Curtis Jackson, I'm not sure why this guy wants to be an actor, for the moment he'll have to keep wanting, because he hasn't pulled anything out the sack with this one. It's not that his performance is dreadful, it's just ... empty, and he really isn't bringing any soul to his character, and I've got to say, I really hope he gets better than this, because I know he's going to keep trying.

Anyway, if you watch this, brush the sick off yourself and go watch Way of the Gun so you can forgive Ryan Phillippe.

In summary even casting a lead that could act probably wouldn't have save this shoddy script, but there's a few good moments that will entertain.