On Blu-ray/DVD/VOD: HARD KILL (2020) and THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY (2020)

HARD KILL
(US - 2020)

It would appear that Lionsgate/Grindstone's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series has come to an end, as what would logically be the latest installment is instead being distributed by the lowly Vertical Entertainment. Sure, maybe Emmett/Furla Films' distribution deal was up, but I'm willing to bet that Lionsgate watched HARD KILL and decided that even with COVID-19 production shutdowns, they weren't this desperate for product. It's hard to believe Willis has been doing these VOD/DTV walk-throughs for a decade now (there's almost 20 of them so far, with more on the way), and the bottom-scraping HARD KILL is by far the worst of the bunch. Teaming for a third consecutive time with regressing director Matt Eskandari after TRAUMA CENTER and SURVIVE THE NIGHT, Willis once again does the bare minimum in HARD KILL, spending most of his screen time alone in a safe room, until his ubiquitous double sneaks out, gets caught, then Willis spends the rest of the film zip-tied to a chair, grimacing at either the sounds of a shootout or wondering exactly how he--Willis, not the character--ended up here. To call the plot threadbare would be overselling it, but Willis is Dayton Chalmers, the CEO of the tech behemoth Chapterhouse. His daughter Dr. Ava Chalmers (Lala Kent) has created a potentially dangerous AI program known as "Project 725," which has vaguely-defined destructive powers if it ends up in the wrong hands. That's exactly what happens when the easily-manipulated Ava falls in with "The Pardoner" (Sergio Rizzuto), an international terrorist who wants to use Project 725 to burn down the global economy. Enter PTSD-stricken Black Ops military contractor Miller (Jesse Metcalfe), who brings along his crew--Dash (Swen Temmel), Sasha (WWE star Natalie Eva Marie), and her brother Harrison (Jon Galanis)--at the suggestion of Chalmer's security chief Fox (Texas Battle), and sets up shop in an abandoned warehouse where The Pardoner is supposed to bring the kidnapped Ava in exchange for Project 725's fail-safe access code. Naturally, it's personal for Miller, who was nearly killed during a past encounter with The Pardoner, exposition conveyed in the most leaden way possible ("He put a bullet in my back...and I still have the scars to prove it").

Even the most generic action movies usually have to work their way up to the climactic showdown at the abandoned warehouse, but HARD KILL--on Blu-ray and DVD four days after bowing at a handful of drive-ins and theaters--spends about 95% of its duration there. That leaves everyone little to do but walk around and yell in between periodic shootouts where The Pardoner's seemingly unlimited supply of faceless, black-helmeted goons run in only to be immediately killed by Miller and his team. HARD KILL is so uninspired that it's the second one of these VOD-era Willis titles--after 2015's EXTRACTION--where he spends most of the movie tied to a chair. And EXTRACTION almost looks like DIE HARD compared to HARD KILL, which is positively Albert Pyun-esque with the way everyone just wanders around the abandoned warehouse to pad the running time, with Eskandari not even remotely interested in conveying the layout or where anyone or anything is in relation to anything else. Willis is visibly bored beyond belief, and he's almost got some competition in the coasting department from Battle, whose character gets shot early and spends the rest of the movie sitting on a table. Kent, Temmel, and Rizzuto appear to be trying to one-up each other to see who can give the worst performance, but I'm calling it for Rizzuto, who gets one of those long bad guy speeches that starts with "You know why they call me 'The Pardoner?'" and proceeds to invoke "The Pardoner's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales. Shot in the Cincinnati area and boasting a ludicrous 31 credited producers, HARD KILL is depressingly bad. It's Seagal bad. There is absolutely nothing here. And worst of all, it's insanely boring, lethargically-paced with no sense of urgency to the proceedings, no suspense given the high stakes, and no effort on the part of the cast to convincingly sell any of it, with Rizzuto about as plausible a feared international terrorist as VANDERPUMP RULES' Kent is as a scientific genius who invents a game-changing AI program. Willis' mumbling sleepwalk of a performance is the least of HARD KILL's problems, and in all seriousness, is he OK? Willis has never been particularly good at hiding his disinterest in a project, but in these last few VOD outings, he's talking slower, he moves gingerly--something seems off in a 1945-1946 Curly Howard way and it's getting noticeable to the point where roasting him really doesn't feel right. (R, 98 mins)




THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY
(UK/US/Italy/Canada - 2020)

A low-key thriller set in the art world that manages to keep your interest while not quite working to its full potential, THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY is based on a 1971 novel by Charles Willeford, best known for his series of Hoke Moseley detective thrillers that inspired the 1990 cult classic MIAMI BLUES. The script is written by Scott B. Smith, who earned an Oscar nomination for adapting his own novel A Simple Plan into a film for Sam Raimi back in 1998, and to that end, THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY is in that same wheelhouse with a seemingly easy, simple act that snowballs into something out of control, but the stakes never quite resonate and the forward momentum is lacking, even when things really start to go south. Some of that might be due to the Merchant-Ivory pacing, some of it to Scott and THE DOUBLE HOUR director Giuseppe Capotondo's many deviations from the novel, which was set in the noir hotbed of Florida, while the more TALENTED MR. RIPLEY-esque film moves to lush areas of Italy. But much of the sense of inertia that permeates the proceedings can be laid on the shoulders of the bland Claes Bang, the Danish star of Ruben Ostlund's wildly overrated THE SQUARE and the extremely divisive Netflix miniseries DRACULA. Purveyors of international art cinema keeps trying to make Bang happen, but beyond his awesome name, there's just not much movie star charisma or screen presence there.

Bang is James Figueras, a pill-popping Milan-based art critic and arrogant bullshit artist who hooks up with American Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki) after one of his museum lectures. She accompanies him to an already-planned weekend visit to the Lake Como summer estate of obscenely wealthy art collector Joseph Cassidy (a grinning, reptilian Mick Jagger, in his first acting role since 2002's THE MAN FROM ELYSIAN FIELDS). Cassidy offers Figueras an exclusive once thought unimaginable: an interview with reclusive artist Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland), who's been off the grid for the last 50 years, after all of his work was destroyed in a fire. Debney is living in a cottage on the Cassidy estate, but won't sell or allow anyone to even see his paintings, not even Cassidy, whose offer to Figueras is two-fold: he also wants a Debney for his collection and more or less encourages Figueras to do whatever is necessary to procure it. Smith and Capotondi indulge in some caustic commentary on the general idea of critics as being pompously full of shit at best and utterly immoral at worst, which gives you an idea of the places a corrupt bastard like Figueras is willing to go, especially being prodded by an almost Mephistophelian Cassidy. Jagger is well-cast, while Sutherland (also in Giuseppe Tornatore's somewhat similar Italy-set art forgery drama THE BEST OFFER back in 2014) deploys some inconsistent Southern drawl that's just distracting, and Debicki creates an interesting character that the film doesn't always successfully utilize. All these shortcomings manage to dissipate in a terrific finale that's almost enough to trick you into thinking the rest of the movie was just as good. Even with the void at the center that is Claes Bang, there's still enough to appreciate that it warrants a look, especially for Jagger completists and fans of the promising Debicki (WIDOWS and Christopher Nolan's COVID-19-delayed TENET). Speaking of the pandemic, THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY was yet another coronavirus casualty, its limited release stalled after its second week in March and its April expansion nixed when US theaters were closed. Sony Pictures Classics very quietly relaunched it in early August just a couple of weeks before its Blu-ray/DVD street date. (R, 98 mins)

On VOD: SURVIVE THE NIGHT (2020)

SURVIVE THE NIGHT
(US - 2020)

Directed by Matt Eskandari. Written by Doug Wolfe. Cast: Chad Michael Murray, Bruce Willis, Shea Buckner, Tyler Jon Olson, Lydia Hull, Riley Wolfe Rach, Jessica Abrams, Sara Lynn Holbrook, Jef Holbrook, Ravare Elise Rupert. (R, 89 mins)

"Where's Frank?"
"He went to get help."

And there it is. "He went to get help." It takes longer than usual--about 45 minutes--for Bruce Willis to find his way out of SURVIVE THE NIGHT, the latest installment in Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series. Of course, it's premiering exclusively on VOD, with the COVID-19 novel coronavirus preventing this newest entry from making its standard simultaneous ten-screen, one-to-two-showings per day theatrical bow. But other than that, it's business as usual for Willis who, even before it became a matter of public health, has long been a practitioner of socially distancing himself from the co-stars and plots of movies he's actually in. To his credit, Willis, reuniting with director Matt Eskandari after their TRAUMA CENTER triumph, is onscreen quite a bit in SURVIVE THE NIGHT, but he frequently appears visibly inconvenienced and couldn't appear less invested in the proceedings. It's a DESPERATE HOURS home invasion scenario minus any sense of suspense, urgency, or even light, as it takes place in almost total darkness, with two sibling fugitives--violent psycho Jamie (Shea Buckner) and somewhat more rational Matthias (Tyler Jon Olson)--on the run and, as typically happens, only making things worse for themselves. Jamie impulsively decides to start shooting in a carryout, killing a hostage and starting a skirmish that ends up with Matthias getting hit in the leg, opening his femoral artery. Traveling the back roads, they find the "Country Clinic" is closed, so they decide to follow doctor Rich (Chad Michael Murray) back to his home.

But Rich has fallen on hard times. Once an up-and-coming surgeon, he was bankrupted by a malpractice suit and only got the job at the Country Clinic through an old friend who wants to give him a second chance. So along with his resentful wife Jan (Lydia Hull) and daughter Riley (Riley Wolfe Rach), he's moved back to his childhood home in rural Georgia. That's fine with Rich's mom Rachel (Jessica Abrams), but it's a sore point with his retired sheriff dad Frank (Willis), who can't believe he caved to the lawsuit and has always regarded his brainy son as a loser with no fight in him. Rich gets to prove his dad wrong when the brothers break into the house in the middle of the night demanding Rich operate on Matthias' leg and stop him from bleeding out. Of course, the plan instantly goes to shit since Jamie can't stop himself from killing somebody, in this case Rachel, who he apparently stabs though it's hard to tell how it all goes down since the scene is so darkly shot and awkwardly cut. Insisting "We're not here to hurt anyone!" approximately ten seconds after stabbing the family's matriarch to death, Jamie ends up tying everyone to chairs and forcing Rich to operate using basic household tools, though Murray doesn't do a very convincing job of selling it (slices open the leg, a couple snips, a clamp, and he says "It's done" after a few seconds and some perfunctory grimaces). But before he can sew the gaping incision, hardass Frank takes action, attacking Jamie with a scalpel and getting stabbed in the gut himself, with Rich eventually getting shot in the shoulder in the ensuing melee.

At this point, Frank takes off and hides in the woods, plotting his next move. It's here that Willis does his most emoting, grunting, crying, and even howling at the moon before taking a short sabbatical and returning for the climax. SURVIVE THE NIGHT is pretty repetitive, with various dumb circumstances repeatedly forcing people to run around the house or go outside only to end up back inside, a sure sign that Eskandari and screenwriter Doug Wolfe really don't have anything here and are just padding the job to get to an acceptable 90-minute length. And isn't there a manhunt for these clowns? Where are the cops? Performances range from apathetic (Murray) to terrible (Buckner), with Willis falling somewhere in the middle. He's a little more present than you'd expect, and his regular double is noticeable only fleetingly when Frank runs into the woods after a pointless car chase around the property (?). There's no character development of any kind and the arcs are totally predictable. Of course, father and son will iron out their differences and Frank will finally respect Rich and apologize for being such an asshole his whole life ("I want you to know that I was always proud of you!"). SURVIVE THE NIGHT is utterly inessential even by VOD-era Willis standards, but it's not the worst he's done. Still, if Chad Michael Murray can't even be bothered to give a shit, then why would Bruce?

In Theaters/On VOD: TRAUMA CENTER (2019)

TRAUMA CENTER
(US - 2019)

Directed by Matt Eskandari. Written by Paul Da Silva. Cast: Nicky Whelan, Bruce Willis, Tito Ortiz, Texas Battle, Catherine Davis, Lala Kent, Sergio Rizzuto, Tyler Jon Olson, Steve Guttenberg, Roman Mitichyan, Jonathan Galanis, Katira Maria, Jaime Irizarry, Leslee Emmett. (R, 87 mins)

A little over two months after the awful 10 MINUTES GONE, here's TRAUMA CENTER, the latest installment in Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series. To be fair, and likely much to his chagrin, Willis is noticeably more present in this one, and he's actually in scenes that take place outdoors and, except for one hilarious bit near the end, interacting with other cast members. He's doing that weird "slow talk" routine that he used in half of REPRISAL (until he apparently got bored with it), and the tone of his dialogue sometimes doesn't match that of the actor with whom he's sharing the scene. Sometimes he yells for no reason and his facial expressions of sympathy and concern look more like he's trying to hold in a fart. Hell, maybe he wasn't there and was composited in by a digital effects team, who knows? Since 2011's SET-UP, he's done well over a dozen of these straight-to-VOD walkthroughs--maybe his entire contribution to them is one epic, ongoing deepfake.

Set and shot in Puerto Rico, TRAUMA CENTER "stars" Willis as San Juan cop Lt. Wakes, whose partner Martin (Tyler Jon Olson) is killed after stumbling on a protection racket being run by Pierce (MMA legend Tito Ortiz) and Tull (Texas Battle), a pair of corrupt vice cops. Things get complicated for the dirty cops when the murder is witnessed by Madison (Nicky Whelan of INCONCEIVABLE), a server at a diner who's closing up and taking out the trash. She takes a bullet in the leg during the shootout and is rushed to the hospital, where Wakes correctly assumes the mystery killer or killers will come after her. That they do--not just to kill her, but to extract the bullet from her left leg which was fired from Pierce's service weapon and will be traced back to him after she undergoes surgery the next morning. Wakes manages to stash Madison on the hospital's vacant seventh floor, an infectious disease ward and bacterial research facility that's currently not in use. While Wakes goes off to investigate Martin's murder on his own (translation: Willis in own separate movie for the next hour), Pierce and Tull make their way to the seventh floor where they engage in a game of cat-and-mouse with a surprisingly resourceful Madison, who's learned to take care of herself after losing her mom and raising her depressed, asthmatic teenage sister Emily (Catherine Davis), who was admitted to the hospital earlier in the day after an asthma attack. Gee, is there any chance Pierce and Tull will threaten Emily's life to get to Madison? And is there any doubt that she'll have an asthma attack at the least opportune time?

If TRAUMA CENTER had any imagination at all, it would've done something with the infectious disease angle. Instead, it's just a generally uninspired DIE HARD IN A HOSPITAL scenario, with Bruce Willis as Argyle. Director Matt Eskandari (12 FEET DEEP) does pull off one unexpectedly effective set piece where Madison sets off a fire alarm and is pursued through the seventh floor corridors with only flashing emergency lights intermittently breaking up the darkness, while a pan to a dome mirror shows that Pierce and Tull are almost right behind her facing the opposite direction and neither party realizes the other is right there. The script by Paul Da Silva is rudimentary at best, with barely-there exposition about Madison's deteriorating relationship with her sister, or Battle's Tull grunting "It's time to take it up a notch" when Madison outwits them for the tenth time. There's a bizarre attempt at making some statement about why people move to San Juan that sounds like bad improv from Willis as Madison asks Wakes why he lives in Puerto Rico, to which he wistfully mutters "the same reason everyone comes to the island...runnin' from ghosts." That constitutes character development here, though it sounds less like added layers to the enigma that is Lt. Wakes, and more like Willis using a heavy-handed metaphor to explain his continued coasting in movies like TRAUMA CENTER.

All things considered, TRAUMA CENTER, while not very good, is inoffensively generic and slightly better than what's come to be expected from these Willis paycheck gigs in his day player years. He's in it quite a bit, even when he's off on his own and not interacting with anyone, which probably means he worked as many as 3-4 days instead of his customary 1-2. He somehow seems more invested in this than he was in MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. Only during a climactic showdown between Wakes and Tull does Willis engage in some of his signature contempt for his craft and his colleagues, forcing Eskandari to assemble a fight scene where it's painfully obvious that he and Battle weren't there at the same time. Willis' extended participation here otherwise is noted, but the real story with TRAUMA CENTER is the presence of Steve Guttenberg--yes, that Steve Guttenberg--in a thankless, two-scene supporting role as the hospital's on-duty ER doc. Now 61 and looking a little schlubbier than in his heyday, Guttenberg's commercial viability was a thing of the past long before he joined the SHARKNADO extended universe with a pair of LAVALANTULA movies for Syfy. But the guy was in some of the biggest hits of the 1980s and held his own in scenes with Laurence Olivier in 1978's THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL. TRAUMA CENTER offers him a nothing role that anyone could've played, and required even less time on the set than Willis (Bruce: "Whoa, Stevie, you sure you want that ER doc role, why don't we switch?"), but what's with giving him ninth billing, sandwiching him between Tyler Jon Olson and Roman Mitichyan in the credits? A forgettable VOD action thriller and Steve Guttenberg (POLICE ACADEMY, COCOON, SHORT CIRCUIT, THREE MEN AND A BABY) doesn't even warrant a special "with" or an "and" credit? What the fuck, TRAUMA CENTER?

The hardest-working man in TRAUMA CENTER,
seen here on the set with Bruce Willis. 

In Theaters: MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (2019)

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
(US - 2019)

Written and directed by Edward Norton. Cast: Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Willem Dafoe, Alec Baldwin, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Cherry Jones, Michael Kenneth Williams, Leslie Mann, Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts, Fisher Stevens, Josh Pais, Robert Ray Wisdom, Radu Spinghel, Peter Lewis, Stephen Adley Guirgis, DeShawn White. (R, 144 mins)

If it seems like MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is the kind of film that's been frozen in ice since 2002 and is just now getting thawed, that could be because director/writer/star Edward Norton has been shepherding it through a nearly two-decade development since he purchased the movie rights to Jonathan Lethem's acclaimed novel shortly after it was published in 1999. But it's also because this is the kind of prestige piece that's becoming an increasingly rare commodity in multiplexes these days. A complex NYC noir with echoes of CHINATOWN and a generous helping of the kind of big-city corruption that's reminiscent of Sidney Lumet, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN probably would've received a more welcome reception as a period HBO or Netflix miniseries, where it would've earned significant acclaim and cleaned up at the Emmys and the Golden Globes. But in theaters, it's a different story. Warner Bros. even seemed to lose confidence in it as the release date approached, knocking it down to 1300 screens in the days before it opened, even after a relentless TV ad blitz in the preceding weeks. The sad fact is that times have changed, and in an era when everything has to be a blockbuster, this kind of modest, mid-level production doesn't bring in the crowds anymore, whether you want to call it a movie for "grownups" or one that's geared toward "older audiences," or simply, a "dad movie." There's plenty of explanations--the trend toward mega-budget franchises, the fact that it'll be on VOD and Blu-ray in three or four months, and that, let's be honest, Norton hasn't headlined a hit movie in a long time. Even though it's a top-notch "dad movie," it's still a small miracle that MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is in theaters at all.

Norton takes so many liberties with Lethem's novel that one could argue the film is its own separate thing. Two major changes: he moves the setting from the then-present late 1990s to the late 1950s (his feeling being that the use of hard-boiled dialogue in the present day worked on the page but would seem too ironic and gimmicky on the screen, and he's right, since BRICK already beat him to it), and he invents a major character exclusive to the film in one Moses Randolph, a venal political power player inspired by notorious Manhattan city planner and parks commissioner Robert Moses, whose post-Depression projects ran up debt and seemed insidiously designed to isolate black neighborhoods, thus propagating the long decline in areas that became slums and ghettos in the ensuing decades. As loose as Norton plays with Lethem's source work, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN works as a well-made, leisurely-paced, and very character-driven film that unfolds like a good book, with a memorable hero in Lionel Essrog (Norton), who has Tourette's and can't stop shouting inappropriate things at the wrong time. On one hand, this feels like another chance for Norton to do his PRIMAL FEAR/THE SCORE schtick, but fortunately, Norton the actor is kept in check by Norton the director, who's careful to avoid turning his long-gestating pet project into a self-indulgent vanity project.

Lionel works as part of the investigative crew of Brooklyn gumshoe Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), who affectionately calls him "Brooklyn" and makes use of Lionel's ability to remember even the most trivial of details. The crew--which also consists of Tony (Bobby Cannavale), Gilbert (Ethan Suplee), and Danny (Dallas Roberts)--have been with Frank since they were kids, when they were all in an orphanage and he took them under his wing. When Frank is killed (aaaand...exit Bruce Willis 15 minutes in) during a dangerous meet in a fleabag hotel with some mystery men--where Frank hid a phone in a dresser drawer so Lionel could listen at a pay phone across the street--Lionel becomes fixated on piecing together the puzzle of meaningless words and phrases from the conversation to find out what Frank was up to and why he wouldn't clue them in. Lionel's pursuit of numerous disparate leads--Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a legal aid for civil rights and gentrification activist Gabby Hurwitz (Cherry Jones); a jazz club owned by Laura's father (Robert Ray Wisdom); a worldly jazz trumpeter (Michael Kenneth Williams); a disgruntled engineer (Willem Dafoe, midway through growing his LIGHTHOUSE beard) who's fallen on hard times; and Randolph (Alec Baldwin), who runs a dozen powerful city offices but remains an unelected public official with enough juice to bully the mayor (Peter Lewis) into bending to his will--eventually comes together, though he gets roughed up several times by a group of Randolph goons led by Lou (Fisher Stevens) and lets things get personal when he realizes that Laura's life is in danger.

Norton's tic-filled performance can be big but it's never hammy, and it's a welcome approach that everyone seems to understand that there's something wrong with his head that makes him act the way he does. He often has to explain that "It's like a piece of my head broke off and is just joyriding me," followed by something like "Giant faggot munchkin meat!" or "Tits on a Tuesday!" or, if he gets really worked up, a loud "IF!" accompanied by a wild head thrash. Even though the other guys in Frank's office call him "Freakshow," it's a term of endearment among them, as they demonstrably take his insights and opinions seriously. Norton's Lionel is a real character instead of a series of awards-baiting outbursts. The creation of Baldwin's Moses Randolph serves to add social and historical commentary to the story line with the dead-on Robert Moses parallels, as well as an obvious, and maybe slightly ham-fisted modern political allegory, with Baldwin's performance being a significantly less cartoonish interpretation of his SNL Donald Trump impression (Randolph even quotes him nearly verbatim at one point, arguing the semantics of rape and stating "When you're powerful, you can do anything you want"). The Trumpification of Robert Moses into Moses Randolph helps MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN become a film of its time in ways that it couldn't have had Norton made this 20 years ago, though, admittedly, die-hard devotees of Lethem's novel probably won't be enthused about these additional layers.

"Bruce, I said I'd *try* to get you out of here
in one day, but I never made any guarantees." 

At 144 minutes, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN may run a little long, but it's always engrossing, and the only weak spot is the perpetually inconvenienced Willis, continuing to give Steven Seagal a run for his rubles as the laziest actor alive. It's really something to watch the way Norton has to shoot Frank's meeting with the four Randolph goons in a gimmicky way to cover for Willis obviously not being there with Fisher Stevens and the other actors. The hotel room is dark and shadowy and the image drifts in and out of focus in an almost hallucinatory fashion for no reason, with Willis obviously doubled from the back (the guy's head isn't even shaped like Willis') and his close-ups are always just him with no one else in the shot when he's responding to someone's questions. This sequence is in the first ten minutes and it actually gets the film off to a clunky start because it looks like Norton is going for some pointless auteur wankery right out of the gate until you realize that it's this way because Willis can't even be bothered to show up for work on good movies, let alone Lionsgate's landmark, ongoing "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series. When Norton was on the dais of Comedy Central's roast of Willis last year, with MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN already wrapped, he wondered if he could get away with the things Willis does: "Could I just leave the set of a movie after my close-ups are done and have my co-stars act opposite a C-stand with a red X taped to it while a script girl reads my dialogue to them?" Gentle ribbing or spoken from experience?

In Theaters/On VOD: 10 MINUTES GONE (2019)

10 MINUTES GONE
(US - 2019)

Directed by Brian A. Miller. Written by Kelvin Mao and Jeff Jingle. Cast: Michael Chiklis, Bruce Willis, Meadow Williams, Kyle Schmid, Lydia Hull, Lala Kent, Texas Battle, Swen Temmel, John Hickman, Sergio Rizzuto, Tyler Jon Olson, Geoff Reeves, Tanya Mityushima, Megan Neuringer. (R, 88 mins)

The latest installment in Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series, 10 MINUTES GONE also marks his fourth collaboration--more like chance encounters--with director Brian A. Miller, following the triumphant trio of THE PRINCE, VICE, and REPRISAL (it's OK if you don't remember those, because Willis doesn't either). An accurate description of the amount of time Bruno probably spent on set, 10 MINUTES GONE is a day trip to Cincinnati, OH for the former actor, who appears sporadically as Rex, a go-between who organizes heist crews for wealthy benefactors requiring distance. He has his usual crew but brings in a couple of outsiders for this latest job--veteran safecracker Frank (Michael Chiklis)--"the best lock man outside of New York," according to Rex--and Frank's younger brother Joe (Tyler Jon Olson), who worked on a Rex job once before but got pinched. Joe's got a bad rep as a result ("Even when he worked all the angles, the chips never fell his way," someone says about him) and the more reliable Frank tags along to vouch for him. Of course, the job--a bank robbery where Frank has to get into the vault to retrieve a mysterious case--goes south when Rex's crew--Griffin (Kyle Schmid), Baxter (Swen Temmel, also one of 25 credited producers), and Marshall (Sergio Rizzuto, also one of 25 credited producers)--are nowhere to be found after an alarm gets pulled. Frank and Joe use a secondary exit only to have Frank get bonked on the head in an alley during their getaway. He comes to ten minutes later to find Joe dead, the case missing, and no clue what went down in the time he was out cold. Convinced he's been set up, Frank teams with Joe's bartender girlfriend Claire (Meadow Williams, also one of 25 credited producers) and hunts down the other three members of Rex's crew of Reservoir Assclowns. Meanwhile, an irate Rex--from the confines of a nearly empty office on the top floor of a high rise overlooking downtown Cincy--sends his ruthless "fixer" Ivory (Lydia Hull, also one of 25 credited producers) to track down Frank when she isn't putting on shades and walking away from explosions as slowly as possible.

The idea of that blank ten minutes has a little in common with Miller's most recent film, the straight-to-VOD BACKTRACE, a film that inexplicably had Sylvester Stallone second-billed to Ryan "Who?" Guzman. But aside from that, 10 MINUTES GONE is so shameless in its groveling, slobbering HEAT worship that even DEN OF THIEVES is looking away in embarrassment. The clumsily-edited shootouts only succeed in making this look like the cheap, Redbox-ready ripoff that it is, but what makes 10 MINUTES GONE worse than usual for its ilk is the laughable script by first-timers Kelvin Mao and Jeff Jingle, a pair of writers who never encountered a cliche they couldn't utilize, starting with some opening narration from Chiklis explaining the rules of Three-Card Monte ("the shills conspire with the mark to cheat the dealer, when in fact, they're simply conspiring with the dealer to cheat the mark"), which still doesn't make the events that transpire any more coherent. Almost every line sounds like something David Caruso would've deemed too cheesy to utter on CSI: MIAMI. Just a random sampling:

• Rex: "None of us would be here if we didn't believe in honor among thieves."
• Frank: "We got a rat in the crew!" 
• Rex: "Who else is after this thing?" 
• Frank: "The heat's comin' down!" 
• Mysterious European benefactor: "Ze clock is ticking."
• Frank, before shooting Baxter in the ankle: "Hey Baxter, ya like dancin'?"
• Doctor who stitched up Griffin, who's vanished from a safe house: "Gone with the wind..."
• Rex, glaring at diagrams on a clear dry-erase board: "This was planned to perfection! What happened?"
• Rex, answering phone: "Talk to me!"
• Rex: "Check his burner!"
• Rex: "Let's load 'em up!"
• Rex: "Time to clear the board! Liquidate everyone!" 

But no one in 10 MINUTES GONE needs Cliche-to-English subtitles like Temmel's Baxter who, in the span of about 30 seconds, drops these turds in rapid-fire succession:

• "How do I know you weren't gonna bring the Five-0?"
• "We in some gnarly shit, Hoss!"
• "I covered my post!"
• "It was clear till things went postal!"
• "We were sittin' on the guards when the fireworks started!"
• "You know how he rolls! Charlie Bronson had to check it out!"
• "I got the hell outta Dodge when the alarms chimed!"

Chiklis is a fine actor and obviously smart enough to know a piece of shit when he's in one, but he soldiers through like a pro because a lead role is a lead role--even if he has to carry Williams, who's a terrible actress--especially when it allows him to indulge in some ass-kicking like a beefy Jason Statham, which maybe reminded him of some glory days on THE SHIELD. As for Willis, it is what it is: another one-day gig in Cincinnati where 95% of his minimal screen time takes place in one room and you can't tell if his later annoyance is him in character over the plot developments or if it's because Willis himself has to be inconvenienced by moving to a different set for the obligatory showdown. In this case, it's a new wing of a train station that's under construction, probably the closest thing they could find to an abandoned warehouse before they ran out of time and Willis' double would have to be pressed into service. The climactic twist is about as predictable and ho-hum as it gets, so much so that it requires the surprise villain to offer this startling auto-critique of the film in progress: "Never walk into a place you don't know how to get out of. Sound familiar?" Yeah, because we've all seen HEAT. 

In Theaters: GLASS (2019)

GLASS
(US - 2019)

Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, Luke Kirby, Adam David Thompson, M. Night Shyamalan, Serge Didenko, Russell Posner, Leslie Stefanson. (PG-13, 129 mins)

After a decade spent as a critical punching bag and all-around industry pariah, M.Night Shyamalan mounted an unexpected comeback with 2015's THE VISIT and 2017's SPLIT, a pair of surprise hits for low-budget horror factory Blumhouse. SPLIT focused on Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a disturbed young man with 23 personalities he collectively calls "The Horde," working to both protect Kevin and contain a 24th, known as "The Beast." Kevin abducts three teenage girls from a mall parking lot and by the end of the film, the monstrous Beast emerges, with a Hulk-like animal rage and a supernatural ability to climb walls. McAvoy's performance was an astonishing tour-de-force and should've been up for some awards, and his work did much of the heavy lifting when it came to making SPLIT Shyamalan's best film in years. A closing credits stinger showing an uncredited Bruce Willis threw everyone for a loop, establishing SPLIT as a secret sequel to Shyamalan's 2000 film UNBREAKABLE, the director's much-ballyhooed follow-up to his blockbuster THE SIXTH SENSE. Considered somewhat of a disappointment at the time, UNBREAKABLE was ultimately a superhero origin story and comic book deconstruction that was made at a time when comic book superhero movies weren't really a thing. The film quickly found loyal cult following and a critical reassessment over the years, and is now regarded by many as every bit as essential the Shyamalan canon as THE SIXTH SENSE.

A lot's changed in 19 years. Comic book and superhero movies rule the multiplex and it seems a new one is opening every other week, with no apparent signs of audience fatigue, so much so that even the ones people hate become blockbusters. The only superhero hit at the time of UNBREAKABLE was Bryan Singer's first X-MEN, and where Shyamalan was once ahead of the curve, he's now playing not so much catch-up, but this sort of analytical, deconstructive take runs the risk of seeming like didactic lecturing to a moviegoing public that, at this point, is pretty knowledgeably savvy when it comes to the medium. It doesn't help that the brief shot of Willis at the end of SPLIT seemed like something added after the fact, and even now, fusing the worlds of UNBREAKABLE and SPLIT into GLASS often feels like Shyamalan is forcibly retconning a superhero trilogy for himself. Set several weeks after the events of SPLIT and 19 years after UNBREAKABLE, GLASS opens with Crumb and his constantly shifting roster of personalities holding another four teenage girls captive in an abandoned Philadelphia factory. Meanwhile, security equipment store owner David Dunn (Willis), the sole survivor of a catastrophic train derailment and a man who's been impervious to injury and prone to superhuman feats of strength, is still moonlighting as a hooded rain poncho-sporting vigilante now referred to by the media as "The Overseer." Gifted with an ESP-like ability to come into physical contact with someone and "see" their criminal past, Dunn, aided by his adult son Joseph (the now-grown Spencer Treat Clark, who played the same role as a kid), goes on frequent walks through the surrounding Philly neighborhoods to seek out wrongdoers, and when Crumb stumbles into him, he "sees" the kidnapped girls. As "The Overseer," Dunn rescues the girls and battles Crumb in his "Beast" form, but when the fight goes outside the warehouse, the cops are already waiting.

Both men are hauled off to a mental institution where they're evaluated by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who specializes in cases of superhero-inspired "delusions of grandeur." She tries to convince them that their abilities aren't real and can be explained away, and brings them together with catatonic patient Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the brittle-boned man who caused the train derailment in UNBREAKABLE and introduced Dunn to his long-suppressed abilities. Price, an aspiring criminal mastermind and comic book villain come to life who calls himself "Mr. Glass," has been confined to the mental hospital for 19 years, faking his vegetative state to wait for the perfect storm. He conspires with Kevin and "The Horde" to plot an escape from the mental hospital and cause a chemical explosion at the opening of the Osaka Tower, a new skyscraper in downtown Philly.

Much of GLASS deals with subverting expectations, which is very much in line with Shyamalan's recurring twist endings. GLASS offers several unexpected turns in the third act, but even under the auspices of a live-action comic book, it too often strains credulity in both its plot developments and the ways it continues to retrofit itself into the events of UNBREAKABLE. The film works better in its first half, particularly with McAvoy's once-again outstanding work as "The Horde" and in the warm relationship between Dunn and his loyal son (bringing Clark back to play Joseph is one of the best decisions Shyamalan makes here). But once "Mr. Glass" starts putting his master plan into motion, things start collapsing. What kind of mental hospital is this? It's made clear that Dr. Staple is visiting and only has three days to evaluate them, but where is the head doctor? Where are the other patients? There appears to be one orderly on duty at any given time, but there's tons of security guards who let Kevin--wearing a nurse's uniform--just wheel Price right out of the ward. Dr. Staple's behavior is inconsistent, even after her motives are revealed--first she's against Kevin's one surviving victim Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, returning from SPLIT) meet with him, but then says she can't help him without her. Shyamalan doesn't seem to know what to do with Taylor-Joy, Clark, or Charlayne Woodard as Elijah's mother, and the big superhero/villain battle outside the mental hospital is an often awkwardly-shot letdown that allows Willis to pull some of his Lionsgate VOD antics and sit out most of the showdown while his double hides under his poncho's hoodie, complete with some Willis dialogue obviously dubbed in post. When all is revealed and the pieces of the puzzle in place after a laborious epilogue, GLASS just never quite jells into a cohesive whole. It's an interesting idea in search of a point. It's well-made, McAvoy is marvelous (introducing even more of the 23 personalities we didn't get to meet the first time around), and in their scenes together, Clark's presence seems to engage Willis enough to remind him of a bygone era when he gave a shit, but in the end, this doesn't live up to either UNBREAKABLE or SPLIT and doesn't fully succeed in making its case that this should've been a trilogy.

In Theaters/On VOD: AIR STRIKE (2018)

AIR STRIKE
(China - 2018)

Directed by Xiao Feng. Written by Chen Ping, Yang Hsin-Yu, Zhang Hongyi, Yushi Wu, Xiaoqi Li and Qiao Wa. Cast: Bruce Willis, Ye Liu, Rumer Willis, Seung-Heon Song, William Chan, Wei Fan, Nicholas Tse, Bingbing Fan, Chen Daoming, Adrien Brody, Lei Jia, Gang Wu, Su Ma, Yongli Che, Yuanzheng Feng, Le Geng, Ning Chang, Simon Yam. (R, 96 mins)

Shot in 2015 and initially known as both the prophetically self-fulfilling THE BOMBING and later as the more inspirational UNBREAKABLE SPIRIT, with a price tag reported to be anywhere between $65-$90 million, this mega-budget Chinese government-funded epic has been hacked down by about 25 minutes for its straight-to-VOD US release under the generic, Redbox-ready title AIR STRIKE. Embarrassingly cheap-looking despite being the most expensive Chinese film ever made at the time it went into production (it was also shot in 3-D, but that was scrapped during post), with aerial dogfight sequences and visual effects that recall the kinds of computer animation that looked dated in the 1990s, AIR STRIKE looks like INCHON if remade by The Asylum. The making of the film seems far more interesting than anything that ended up onscreen, a jumbled hodgepodge of characters and events taking place in 1939 during the Second Sino-Japanese War, where Japan launched near-constant bombing raids that decimated Chongqing. There's three different storylines, with characters sometimes intersecting and ending up in places and you have no idea how they got there (the Chinese characters are badly dubbed in English, while the Japanese villains get subtitles). There's former pilot Xue Gangtou (Ye Liu), injured on a mission and reassigned to military intelligence, where he's to ensure that a truck with a secret McGuffin cargo must gets to Chongqing, complete with a half-assed WAGES OF FEAR crossing over a precarious bridge. There's a team of fighter pilots overseen by constipated-looking US military adviser Col. Jack Johnson (top-billed export value Bruce Willis), who barks orders and has to whip them into shape. And there's tons of gratuitous mahjong at a local bar.

The fact that Lionsgate is AIR STRIKE's US distributor might make it a backdoor installment in the studio's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series, but he's onscreen quite a bit here and actually takes part in some of the--albeit mostly greenscreen--action sequences. But he finds other ways to make his participation something special and display his utter contempt for what he does for a living, whether it's vacillating between several-day stubble and being clean-shaven in a single scene with no regard for continuity (this happens several times, and what kind of by-the-book US military honcho in 1939 sported trendy stubble?) or, in one scene that has to be seen to be believed, breaking out an anachronistic, open-mic-night-level Christopher Walken impression when the Chinese pilots throw him a surprise birthday party, going off on an obviously improvised monologue about a watch his father gave him. Did Chinese director Xiao Feng even realize his star was amusing himself by dropping a PULP FICTION reference into the middle of a scene? Willis is even visibly smirking while he's doing it. His daughter Rumer gets third billing for a 20-second bit part as a nurse, and she's been unconvincingly dubbed over with a British accent. Oscar-winner Adrien Brody turns up for two brief scenes in the not-even-remotely-pivotal role of "Steve," an American volunteering at a Chongqing orphanage and getting blown up before we even figure out who he is (an entire subplot with his character has been cut for the US release, perhaps as a bizarre tribute to the actor's mostly scrapped work in Terrence Malick's THE THIN RED LINE). Bingbing Fan, the hugely popular actress, model, and pop singer and China's highest-paid superstar, also puts in a few sporadic appearances. Her summer 2018 disappearance and subsequent re-emergence and tax evasion scandal (she's reportedly been fined the equivalent of $130 million by the Chinese government), combined with one-time producer Zhi Jianxiang being a fugitive on the country's most wanted list after fleeing China when he was hit with fraud and money laundering charges related to this project and 2015's IP MAN 3, resulted in the cancellation of the long-shelved film's belated Chinese release just a week before its American debut.

It's worth pointing out that the shots of Bruce Willis
above AND below come from the SAME scene.

Adrian Brody pleading with his
agent to get him in a better movie.

It's hard to imagine AIR STRIKE being good in any incarnation. The original Chinese version reportedly ran 120 minutes, but given its legal issues at home, the truncated, 96-minute American cut, supervised by veteran editor Robert A. Ferretti (TANGO & CASH, DIE HARD 2, UNDER SIEGE) might be the only one available for the foreseeable future. Prior to taking on this massive epic, director Xiao Feng only had one other film to his credit, the 2012 war drama HUSHED ROAR, which was unreleased outside of China. Helping out under the credited guise of "consultant" and creative adviser is the unlikely Mel Gibson, then in one of his periodic Hollywood pariah periods prior to his Oscar-nominated resurgence as a filmmaker with 2016's HACKSAW RIDGE. Ostensibly brought aboard because of his experience in hard-hitting battle scenes, it's possible Gibson had a hand in directing Willis and Brody, as almost all of the combat and action sequences are just a blurred blizzard of atrocious and aggressively unconvincing CGI. Other experienced Hollywood pros were hired by the Chinese producers in an advisory capacity, including cinematographer Conrad W. Hall (PANIC ROOM, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN), credited as "special effects consultant," and the late, great Vilmos Zsigmond as a "cinematography consultant" to the film's own D.P. Shu Yang. An Academy Award-winner for his work on 1977's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and also the renowned cinematographer of MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, DELIVERANCE, and THE DEER HUNTER among many others, Zsigmond was a legend in his field when he died in 2016 at the age of 85. Sadly, AIR STRIKE will go down as his final work, though there's nothing here to indicate that he, Hall, or Gibson were able to help in any way. The kind of movie where six screenwriters are credited and the best any of them can come up with is the one man who knows the contents of the truck's secret cargo's last, dying words being "The truck...is carrying...aaaaggghh..." as he keels over, AIR STRIKE is one of the most bewilderingly awful films of the year. I mean, seriously. What the fuck happened here? What can you say about a movie that's such a garbage fire that 2018 Bruce Willis is one of its positives?

AIR STRIKE director Xiao Feng on the set with "consultant" Mel Gibson.

In Theaters/On VOD: REPRISAL (2018)

REPRISAL
(US/UK - 2018)

Directed by Brian A. Miller. Written by Bryce Hammons. Cast: Frank Grillo, Bruce Willis, Olivia Culpo, Johnathon Schaech, Natali Yura, Wass Stevens, Colin Egglesfield, Uncle Murda, Christopher Rob Bowen, Natalia Sophie Butler, Tyler Olson, Geoff Reeves, Shea Buckner, Ken Strunk. (R, 89 mins)

On Comedy Central's recent roast of former actor Bruce Willis, Edward Norton was on the dais and wondered if he could get away with the stuff Willis does: "Could I just leave the set of a movie after my close-ups are done and have my co-stars act opposite a C-stand with a red 'X' taped to it while a script girl reads my dialogue to them?" Perhaps Norton has seen at least a few entries in Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series, the latest installment being REPRISAL. Reuniting Willis--at least for a day, maybe two--with his THE PRINCE and VICE director Brian A. Miller, REPRISAL also makes frequent use of the big-eared Willis double who pretty much handled his work for him in the climactic shootout of FIRST KILL. In a performance that sets new standards for doing the bare minimum, Willis again demonstrates the kind of coasting entitlement that comes when you no longer feel the need to hide your utter contempt for your co-stars, your craft, and your audience. Upon a cursory glance, he seems to be in a good amount of REPRISAL, but not when you look closer. His first appearance comes five minutes in and perfectly encapsulates this bizarre phase of Willis' career: his character is seen working out in his driveway and his neighbor jokingly calls him "old man." But it's not Willis. We see Willis' Fake Shemp with the big ears and his back to the camera, then Miller cuts to a close-up where Willis looks frazzled and confused, but the shots don't really match. He's standing in front of windows that aren't there in the long shot. It looks like Miller has been forced to sub in outtakes from another scene. Then there's a cut to the big-eared double, his back to the camera, saying "I'll take you anytime, punk!" in what is clearly the voice of someone trying--and failing--to sound like Bruce Willis. This double shows up at a few more times throughout the movie, usually when Willis' character is required to be outdoors. Were it not for this man's heroic actions in the line of duty, doing whatever was needed to make the DIE HARD icon's performance complete, the makers of REPRISAL might've been forced to resort to drastic measures, like seeing if John Cusack was available.

Once in a while, Willis appears in one of these things and it's not terrible. 2016's HEAT ripoff MARAUDERS was actually OK, but that was due mostly to a borderline-gonzo performance by Christopher Meloni as a pissed-off FBI agent and certainly not due to Willis putting in a few sporadic, sleepy appearances as a financial CEO organizing robberies of his own banks. REPRISAL is maybe the worst of the bunch, and it doesn't even get a good performance out of the usually reliable PURGE and WHEELMAN tough guy Frank Grillo, who just looks lethargic and bored from the start. Grillo makes a lot of movies. He knows this is a piece of shit, but he doesn't have the luxury of being Bruce Willis, so he's forced to trudge through it. Grillo stars as Jacob Tasker, the manager of a downtown Cincinnati bank that's robbed by Gabriel (Johnathon Schaech), a methodical master criminal who's called in a series of bomb threats around the city as a distraction. Put on administrative leave for a week after the robbery, Jacob has time to sit at home and stew about things--not just what he could've done differently, but also his diabetic daughter Sophia (young Natalia Sophie Butler, given a warm welcome to the biz by having her name misspelled "Natlia" in the credits) and some mounting bills that are causing some tension with wife Christina (Olivia Culpo, whose primary function here is to say things like "Any updates?" and "Talk to me!"). Jacob spends a lot of his downtime drinking Heinekens with his neighbor James (Willis), a retired cop who helps him break down the robbery as the two try to pinpoint where the next one will occur. Jacob somehow figures this out and starts tailing Gabriel himself, even following him to an armored car heist and intervening as the cops arrive. Gabriel drops the bag of money during the shootout with the cops, prompting Jacob to impulsively pull a SILENT PARTNER and take the money for himself. This doesn't quite work out, as Gabriel figures out Jacob has the money and--wait for it--kidnaps Christina and Sophia, who goes into diabetic shock right on schedule while Jacob is forced to tell James he took the money as the two face two challenges: figuring out how to rescue Christina and Sophia and doing so with as little participation from Willis as possible.

REPRISAL is neither smart nor ambitious enough to devise something as clever as the 1979 cult classic THE SILENT PARTNER, where bank teller Elliott Gould figures out that deranged mall Santa Christopher Plummer is plotting to rob his bank, giving him time to concoct a clandestine plan to skim some money off the eventual take, starting a lethal game of cat and mouse between a mild-mannered teller who got a little greedy and a lunatic psycho who wants his money. No, REPRISAL just has no energy or momentum at all, starting with an unusually dull Grillo, who's saddled with a character that just as unbelievable as he is idiotic. Schaech isn't bad as far as stock, teeth-gritting bad guys go, even if it seems like the prep for his role consisted of watching Val Kilmer's and Tom Sizemore's scenes in HEAT, which is probably more than anyone else did. And Bruce? Well, he's Bruce. He spends a good chunk of his scenes--almost all in close-up because that's pretty much all he was there for--doing this weird, slurring thing with his voice. What is he doing? Is he ad-libbing his retiree character recovering from a stroke?  It's a pointless affect that goes nowhere and serves no purpose other than Willis pretending he's "acting," but he can't even be bothered to keep up the ruse, as he starts speaking normally midway through. He does get to jog around with a shotgun near the end and blow somebody away, but it's obvious from the editing (lots of Bruce close-ups) and from the presence of the Fake Shemp that Willis and the actor he kills weren't there at the same time. There's one scene between Willis and Grillo where they have a beer in Jacob's backyard, and it seriously looks like neither actor has ever been in front of a camera before. But honestly, nothing sums up the futility of chronicling all of these Redbox-ready Lionsgate VOD dumpjobs like that first scene with Willis' double less than five minutes into the movie. I mean, seriously, look at this. This is laziness and apathy on a Steven Seagal level. Look how this scene had to be cobbled together just because Willis couldn't be bothered to stand there and stretch in a driveway. Edward Norton wasn't joking.

In Theaters: DEATH WISH (2018)

DEATH WISH
(US - 2018)

Directed by Eli Roth. Written by Joe Carnahan. Cast: Bruce Willis, Vincent D'Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Dean Norris, Kimberly Elise, Beau Knapp, Camila Morrone, Len Cariou, Mike Epps, Wendy Crewson, Stephen McHattie, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Jack Kesy, Ian Matthews, Stephanie Janusauskas, Luis Oliva, Moe Jeudy Lamour. (R, 107 mins)

Shot in 2016 and with its release date bumped once already after the Las Vegas mass shooting last October, the long-gestating remake of the 1974 classic DEATH WISH is finally in theaters, and once again timed in close proximity to another tragedy with the horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, FL. Given the frequency of mass shootings in America, it's likely that any DEATH WISH release date would coincide with one and unintenionally leave a bad aftertaste. But honestly, that's giving it too much credit. DEATH WISH '18 is empty-calorie junk-food entertainment that stacks the deck against its vigilante hero and throws red meat at the audience. It's designed to get a response, and judging from the crowd applause at key moments--like one guy getting his sciatic nerve sliced open and doused in brake fluid before a jacked-up car falls and smashes his head like a watermelon at a Gallagher show--it's mission accomplished in "Good Guy with a Gun" fantasy wish-fulfillment. This had a rocky journey from the start: in various stages of development since 2006, with Sylvester Stallone, Liam Neeson, Benicio del Toro, Frank Grillo, Russell Crowe, Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt either attached or approached to star, Joe Carnahan (NARC, SMOKIN' ACES, THE GREY) wrote the script and was set to direct until he departed in 2013 over the usual "creative differences." That led to the BIG BAD WOLVES team of Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado coming aboard to direct, with Bruce Willis signed on to star. They split when Willis and the producers wouldn't let them rewrite Carnahan's script, but when Eli Roth (HOSTEL) ended up getting the directing gig, the script wound up being completely overhauled by an uncredited Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the writing team behind ED WOOD and THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT. The end result still has Carnahan receiving sole writing credit, even though he left the project three years before production even commenced.

Taking a break from his ongoing, landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series of interchangeable Lionsgate VOD releases, Bruce Willis steps into the iconic Charles Bronson role as Paul Kersey, this time a Chicago ER surgeon instead of a mild-mannered NYC architect. Where DEATH WISH '74, based on a 1972 novel by Brian Garfield, addressed the rise of urban violence and decay in a NYC that was rapidly growing scuzzier and more dangerous by the day, DEATH WISH '18 offers rudimentary commentary on Chicago being one of the most dangerous cities in America, even though the Windy City is mostly portrayed here by Montreal. Of course, that violence hits home when Dr. Kersey is called into work one evening and his wife Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) and college-bound daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone) are the victims of a home invasion by a trio of scumbags. Lucy is killed and Jordan is left in a coma, and a shell-shocked Kersey is inevitably frustrated when well-meaning but ineffectual detectives Raines (Dean Norris) and Jackson (Kimberly Elise) can't do much besides wait for a break in the case. His rage simmering to a boil, unable to sleep or focus on work, and possibly thinking of his Don't Mess with Texas father-in-law (Len Cariou), Kersey lucks into obtaining a gun when a gang-banger is brought into the ER and no one sees or hears his gun hit the floor, which Kersey stealthily stashes into his scrubs. He then tries out the gun at an abandoned warehouse and becomes a crack shot over the course of one split-screen montage set to AC/DC's "Back in Black." Donning a series of hoodies he swipes from hospital laundry, Kersey begins roaming the most dangerous areas of Chicago, blowing away thugs, drug dealers, and every shitbag he encounters, becoming a folk hero and viral video sensation dubbed "The Grim Reaper." In a development worthy of the Plot Convenience Playhouse Hall of Fame, Kersey gets a break the cops never could when a gunshot victim lands in the ER sporting the watch Lucy gave him for his birthday, one of the many expensive items stolen in the home invasion. Of course this leads to Kersey vigilantism getting "personal," with one-step-behind Raines and Jackson (who seem to be the only Chicago detectives on duty at any given time) taking way too long to put it together that Kersey is The Grim Reaper.

Roth offers frequent talking head cutaways to Chicago radio personality Mancow and Sirius XM's Sway Calloway discussing the Grim Reaper phenomenon on their morning shows, and DEATH WISH '18 makes the era-appropriate adjustments with smartphone videos and Reaper memes going viral, but this new take seems to split the difference between the grittiness and social commentary of the 1974 original and its increasingly silly sequels. Bronson's Kersey was shocked and repulsed by his own propensity for savage violence, so much so that he throws up after committing his first murder before finding catharsis in his actions. Willis' Kersey sees those actions making him a hero and smirks like Bruce Willis and starts cracking wise, which didn't happen with Bronson until the sequels (much the way A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET's ominous and evil "Fred Krueger" morphs into stand-up comic Freddy Krueger over the course of the subsequent entries). Everyone remembers Bronson's "You believe in Jesus? Well, you're gonna meet him..." from DEATH WISH II and Willis gets his version of that when powerful drug lord "The Ice Cream Man" (Moe Jeudy Lamour) asks "Who the fuck are you?" with the inevitable reply "Your last customer," and...BANG!

Willis' transformation from upper-middle class family man to John McClane circa LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD keeps DEATH WISH '18 from being anything more than a schlocky, instant gratification vigilante thriller, and it's also worth noting that Bronson's Kersey never did find the creeps who killed his wife and left his daughter in a coma, an impossible closure that this new film feels the need to provide. It isn't any better or worse than, say, 1987's DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN, but there's some missed opportunities here, particularly one bit that speaks volumes when Kersey's ne'er-do-well brother Frank (Vincent D'Onofrio) shows up at his house when he isn't home and finds his weapons and ammo stash in the basement rec room where he's been sleeping. The entire room is filled with empties, dirty dishes, dirty clothes, and looks like a particularly nightmarish episode of HOARDERS. Surely, Kersey has gone insane to some degree as evidenced by the living conditions in his basement. At one time, Willis would've been interested in exploring that aspect, but DEATH WISH '18 is more concerned with fashioning this as a throwback Bruce Willis vehicle. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since Willis actually shows up and it's probably his best movie in several  years simply by default. And for really hardcore cult movie nerds, Roth does include a cameo by Sorcery's STUNT ROCK jam "Sacrifice." It has its moments, but at the end of the day, chalk this up as another remake that's an acceptable time-killer but didn't really need to be.

In Theaters/On VOD: ACTS OF VIOLENCE (2018)

ACTS OF VIOLENCE
(US/UK - 2018)

Directed by Brett Donowho. Written by Nicolas Aaron Mezzanatto. Cast: Cole Hauser, Bruce Willis, Shawn Ashmore, Ashton Holmes, Mike Epps, Sophia Bush, Melissa Bolona, Patrick St. Esprit, Sean Brosnan, Tiffany Brouwer, Jenna B. Kelly, Rotimi Akinosho, Matt Metzler, Christopher Rob Bowen. (R, 87 mins)

The latest installment in Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series finds the actor celebrating the 30th anniversary of DIE HARD by spending 90% of his cumulative ten minutes of screen time seated at a desk thumbing through paperwork. As burned-out Cleveland detective Avery, Willis opens the film big, participating in a well-shot drug raid that has enough arresting camera work to show that the filmmakers watched that one episode from the first season of HBO's TRUE DETECTIVE. Avery is trying to bust a drug and human trafficking raid run by crime lord and all-around shitbag Max Livingston (the unlikely Mike Epps), who's also alternately referred to as "Max Livington" in an apparent homage to Stallone's Lincoln Hawk(s) in OVER THE TOP. But don't think Willis is putting forth any effort, because the action soon switches gears and becomes THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN remade as a blue collar TAKEN ripoff. The MacGregors took no guff as kids (they're shown decking some bullies in a flashback) and they still don't as adults. So when baby brother Roman's (A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE's Ashton Holmes) fiancee and childhood sweetheart Mia (Melissa Bolona) is abducted by Living(s)ton's goons (one of them played by Sean Brosnan, son of Pierce) and held captive among destitute women forced into drug addition and prostitution (and his inventory of "product" is depleted thanks to a bad batch of fentanyl making the rounds) and the cops' hands are inevitably tied, Roman's military vet brothers--eldest Deklan (Cole Hauser), a PTSD anger management case who can't adjust to civilian life, and elder Brandon (Shawn Ashmore), also a combat vet--give him a crash course in military and weapons training. This preps them all to go full urban SEARCHERS to mount a rescue mission to save Mia and destroy Living(s)ton's operation.

As far as these kinds of by-the-numbers, straight-to-VOD actioners with 29 credited producers go, ACTS OF VIOLENCE is passable. It moves briskly enough and with the closing credits rolling at 80 minutes, doesn't overstay its welcome. There's no shortage of cliches, whether it's frustrated Avery telling Deklan to back off and let the cops do their job, or Avery reaching into his top desk drawer for a flask of Jim Beam to pour into his coffee mug, or the very concept of average citizens taking the law into their own hands (which Willis will be doing soon in Eli Roth's upcoming remake of DEATH WISH). You've seen this movie a thousand times before, but director Brett Donowho and screenwriter Nicolas Aaron Mezzanatto earn some points by letting things get a little more unpleasant and grim than expected, as well as demonstrating a willingness to kill off characters you wouldn't expect. Still, don't look for much in the way of cinema verite or social commentary despite Ohio, particularly the Cleveland area with its close proximity to the Ohio Turnpike, being a key transportation hub in human trafficking as well as a major contributor to the state's distressingly high numbers of overdose deaths related to the opioid epidemic.

While it's not enough to make it anything above average, ACTS OF VIOLENCE also gets a surprising boost from a convincing performance by Hauser. Looking and sounding more and more like his dad--B-movie legend Wings Hauser--as he gets older, Hauser is actually trying here and there's no reason he shouldn't have a busy career in these kinds of movies. He'll always have DAZED AND CONFUSED, but he also paid his dues with supporting roles in big-budget hits like PITCH BLACK and 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, but Hollywood gave up on trying to make him a leading man after nobody went to see PAPARAZZI and THE CAVE a decade and a half ago. Hauser could be a case of getting better with age, because he gives ACTS OF VIOLENCE a little more stoical grit than you'd expect. He's certainly more enthused about being here than his HART'S WAR and TEARS OF THE SUN co-star Willis, who mumbles his way through his sporadic appearances like he just accidentally took some Advil PM for a daytime headache. A visibly inconvenienced Willis is doubled in a few shots of his character from behind and probably didn't work on this for more than two days, but even he fares better than an under-utilized Sophia Bush, wasted in a frivolous supporting role as Avery's concerned partner. Bush's lines are limited mainly to some variation on "Avery, are you OK?" and you have to wonder why she left a popular hit cop show like CHICAGO P.D. to play essentially the same role in a run-of-the-mill Bruce Willis VOD cop movie. This isn't exactly an upward move if she left TV for the movies, unless she's taking misguided career advice from Bruce Willis.