Movie Review: Striking Distance (1993)

Genre: Action Thriller  

Director: Rowdy Herrington  

Starring: Bruce Willis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Dennis Farina, Tom Sizemore, Brion James, John Mahoney  
Running Time: 101 minutes  

Synopsis: In Pittsburgh, homicide detective Tom Hardy (Bruce Willis) is shunned for testifying against his partner in a police brutality trial. His father (John Mahoney), also a police officer, then dies in a botched high speed car chase. When Tom publicly disagrees with the arrest of a suspect in the Polish Hill serial killer case, he is demoted to river patrol duty. Two years later he is teamed with officer Jo Christman (Sarah Jessica Parker), just as a series of murdered women are dumped in the river. Tom is convinced the Polish Hill murderer is back, setting him in conflict with his uncle, Police Captain Nick Detillo (Dennis Farina).

What Works Well: The Pittsburgh locations are a refreshing change, and director Rowdy Herrington does not spare any carnage in a series of exhilarating stunt-filled car and boat chases. Bruce Willis never stretches but provides sturdy presence in the central role, supported by a deep cast. The plot contains enough criminal, familial, personal, and professional complications to maintain momentum. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Apart from the generic and meaningless title, the logic holes are large, the red herrings obvious, and several scenes go on for longer than needed. The cliches include Tom resorting to heavy drinking, living on a boat, and being emotionally rescued by a good woman. The script is cluttered by an endless number of related police officers (brothers, fathers, cousins, uncles) always ready to sputter, swear, and square up to each other instead of just...talking.

Key Quote:

Nick: There's an old Italian saying: Never scald your tongue on another man's soup.

Tom: Yeah? There's an old Irish saying: Don't listen to old Italian sayings.

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Movie Review: Last Man Standing (1996)

Genre: Action  

Director: Walter Hill  
Starring: Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Bruce Dern  

Running Time: 101 minutes  

Synopsis: West Texas in the 1930s, during the prohibition era. Mercenary drifter John Smith (Bruce Willis) arrives at the small and mostly abandoned town of Jericho. He finds the Doyle (Irish) and Strozzi (Italian) gangs locked in a battle for control of the illegal booze trade from Mexico. A dual-handgun expert, Smith decides to profit by selling his services to both sides. The ineffective Sheriff Ed Galt (Bruce Dern) does little to stop him, but Doyle's Tommy gun wielding assassin Hickey (Christopher Walken) does not appreciate Smith's interventions.

What Works Well: This credited remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (which was also unofficially remade as A Fistful Of Dollars) enjoys a lost-in-time setting of a middle-of-nowhere near-ghost town predominantly occupied by gang members. Majestic cinematography (by Lloyd Ahern), soulful music (by Ry Cooder), and natty outfits add texture to the aesthetics and the quest-for-a-cause theme. Director Walter Hill stages the short and sharp action scenes with balletic guns a-blazing ferocity.

What Does Not Work As Well: The characters appear to lack belief and soullessly go through the pre-ordained motions, not helped by excessive narration over-reaching for noir cynicism. Christopher Walken and Bruce Dern are given relatively little to do, leaving other, less interesting cast members to spar against Bruce Willis' stranger-in-a-strange-land. The narrative flow is occasionally choppy, suggesting some important material was abandoned on the editing room floor.

Key Quote:

Hickey (to Smith): I don't want to die in Texas. Chicago, maybe... but not Texas. You can meet me there if you like.



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Movie Review: The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Genre: Buddy Action Thriller  

Director: Tony Scott  

Starring: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Halle Berry  

Running Time: 105 minutes  

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, former Secret Service agent Joe Hallenbeck (Bruce Willis) is now a lowly private investigator. His wife Sarah is having an affair, and his teen daughter Darian hates him. Joe inherits an assignment to protect stripper Cory (Halle Berry), but she is soon gunned down. He teams up with Cory's boyfriend Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans), a disgraced former star quarterback, to investigate. They uncover a plot mixing blackmail, political corruption, and sports betting, with pro football team owner Shelly Marcone and senator Calvin Baynard deeply involved.

What Works Well: The Joe Hallenbeck character is a terrific throwback to deeply flawed film noir protagonists convinced that societal darkness is closing in. Bruce Willis wears the role like a trench coat on a dark rainy night, and revels in writer Shane Black's often razor sharp and eminently quotable script. The interplay between Willis and Dix is smooth as they build rapport, chase down smug baddies, and clash with goon armies, while director Tony Scott generates and sustains admirable levels of stylish energy. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The excessive coarse language is eventually numbing and starts to betray a lack of imagination, and Joe's ability to talk himself out of tight situations is overused and wears thin. The plot gallops from incredulous to ridiculous, with the final third just a blur of repetitive and continuous car chases, gunfire, punch-ups, stunts, and near-misses. Behind Willis and Wayans, the secondary characters are disposable sketches, and Joe's young daughter (played by Danielle Harris) is the best that writer Black can come up with in the form of a relatable female role.

Key Quote:

Joe: All private detectives are scumbags.



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Movie Review: The Story Of Us (1999)

Genre: Romantic Dramedy

Director: Rob Reiner

Starring: Bruce Willis, Michelle Pfeiffer

Running Time: 95 minutes

Synopsis: Ben and Katie Jordan (Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer) are caught in a disintegrating marriage. He resents her for no longer being spontaneous, while she is angry at him for being self-centered and not appreciating all she does for their family. They keep up appearances for the sake of their two teenaged kids as flashbacks reveal their history together. With the children now about to return from summer camp, Ben and Katie have to decide on their future.

What Works Well: It's not easy to find the soul of a romantic comedy within the carnage of a failing relationship, but director Rob Reiner finds the right balance between poignancy and humour. The script (by Alan Zweibel and Jessie Nelson) does not sugarcoat the pain suffered by two caring adults, Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer bringing winning personas into the complexities of a union buckling under diverging personal evolution. A rich supporting cast features Reiner himself, plus Rita Wilson, Tim Matheson, Julie Hagerty, Red Buttons and Betty White.

What Does Not Work As Well: This is not a universe where job demands ever seem to play a serious role in the couple's life. Some of the emotional displays are repetitive, and the resolution, while effective, is hurried. 

Conclusion: The rigours of couplehood reflected in tears and smiles.



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Movie Review: Perfect Stranger (2007)

Genre: Crime Investigation Thriller

Director: James Foley

Starring: Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, Giovanni Ribisi

Running Time: 109 minutes

Synopsis: New York-based investigative reporter Rowena Price (Halle Berry) is frustrated when her story exposing a politician is killed. She receives a tip from thorny acquaintance Grace to pursue the affairs of womanizing marketing executive Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis). When Grace turns up dead, Rowena teams up with her work colleague and computer wizard Miles (Giovanni Ribisi) to infiltrate Harrison's company pretending to be a temp. Harrison soon sets his eyes on Rowena, but his secrets are closely guarded.

What Works Well: The avant garde artwork at Harrison Hill's marketing firm looks good, and some of Halle Berry's outfits are stellar.

What Does Not Work As Well: The Todd Komarnicki script is an unsalvageable inert mess, never generating any momentum nor meaningful sympathy for the key characters. The murder victim Grace is a one-scene non-entity, her case never triggers any police investigation, and Rowena's amateur investigation consists of snaring Harrison with good looks augmented by juvenile flirting in 1990s chat rooms. Everyone seems to have big secrets to hide, the case details are a mix of the untidy and the bizarre, and the rushed ending is a befuddling disaster.

Conclusion: Perfectly awful.



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Movie Review: Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995)

The third instalment in the franchise, Die Hard With A Vengeance introduces buddy film elements and breaks free from a single-location focus. While the entertainment value remains high, bloat creeps in with the loss of narrative discipline.

A terrorist calling himself Simon (Jeremy Irons) triggers an explosion at a New York City department store, then threatens more carnage unless Police Lieutenant John McClane (Bruce Willis) follows his every order. The first instruction sends McClane to Harlem, where he is rescued from a rough encounter by store owner Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson). Simon then dispatches McClane and Zeus on a cross-town race to try and stop a bomb from exploding on a subway train. They are able to minimize casualties, but the bomb causes structural damage under Wall Street.

Simon next claims to have a bomb hidden in one of the City's schools, without revealing which one. McClane starts to suspect the terrorist is distracting all emergency responders to clear the way for a major crime. He makes his way back to Wall Street to try and uncover Simon's identity and real objectives.

John McTiernan returns as director, and the script by Jonathan Hensleigh (based on his book) is ambitious. Realizing the need for a refresh after confining the action in the first two movies to a high rise then an airport, Die Hard With A Vengeance expands the geography to all of New York City. The premise is broadened to a manic treasure hunt orchestrated by a madman enjoying his Simon Says powers while unspooling a malevolent hidden plot. McClane also gets support from a reluctant but resourceful partner in store owner Zeus.

The highlights are enjoyable, including the near-mortal sandwich board mess in Harlem, the race from Harlem to Wall Street through Central Park, and the edgy banter between McClane and Zeus. With almost cartoonish levels of mayhem and spectacular stunts, the energy levels are maintained at a remarkable level throughout the 128 minutes.

But the signs of fatigue creeping into the series are also obvious. The quips are forced and the action scenes often unnecessarily extended. Only Simon's voice is heard for the first half, robbing the movie of its antagonist, and it takes a long time for the outline of the genuine crime to take shape. The school bombing sub-plot drags on well past the point of effectiveness. The final act is more frenzied than good, a flurry of people, places and double-crosses dissolving into a choppy climax.

Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Irons bring plenty of star power, and Die Hard With A Vengeance never lacks visual polish. The novelty may be fading, but John McClane still carries caustic swagger.



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Movie Review: A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)

A brainless action movie, A Good Day To Die Hard is a perfunctory effort callously exploiting a once proud brand.

A power struggle in Russia embroils dissident Komarev (Sebastian Koch) and defence minister candidate Chagarin. With Komarev about to go on trial but holding information potentially damaging to Chagarin, the CIA get involved, but a botched operation results in the arrest of agent Jack McClane (Jai Courtney).

His father John (Bruce Willis) heads to Russia to see how he can help, although father and son have a strained relationship. John is immediately thrust into the CIA's disorderly attempts to free Komarev, with the dissident's daughter Irina (Yulia Snigir) getting involved and a climax at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor site.

The bad signs appear early: plenty of Russian dialogue with no sub-titles, no attempt at weaving a compelling narrative, faceless bad guys with no personality, and the lunacy of an arrested American agent placed in the same Russian courtroom as a dissident.

In this fifth instalment of the Die Hard series, writer Skip Woods and director John Moore have no idea where to take the franchise next. In desperation they open the action with an endless over-the-top car chase scene on Russian streets, a surrender proclamation admitting that in the absence of story, characters, or logic, the CGI will run amok. 

The rest of A Good Day To Die Hard never gets any better, father and son moving from one contrived shoot-out to the next, helicopters thrown into the mix just because, Bruce Willis as John McClane reduced to the side-kick role in his own series, and Jai Courtney as his son lacking the definition or charisma to come anywhere near being capable of carrying the load. The rest of the cast members are back-seat passengers on the often ridiculous technology-enhanced ride.

The father-son moments quickly default to buddy movie quips, and at some point a plot twist of sorts is introduced, but amidst all the absurdity it barely registers. A Good Day To Die Hard is a really bad day at the movies.



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Movie Review: The Bonfire Of The Vanities (1990)

A satirical comedy-drama about human surrender to avarice, The Bonfire Of The Vanities tackles weighty subjects with a dismissively careless attitude.

Perpetually drunk reporter-turned-author Peter Fallow (Bruce Willis) basks in the glory of his new-found fame as a best-selling author. In flashback, Fallow recounts the past year's events. Sherman McCoy (Tom Hanks) is one of the few "Masters of the Universe", a mega-wealthy Wall Street bond trader raking in millions per deal. Married to Judy (Kim Cattrall), he is carrying on an affair with the equally married airhead Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith).

Sherman picks up Maria from the airport and after a wrong turn they end up deep in the Bronx late at night. They tangle with two Black men and in the frantic effort to drive away Maria, now in the driver's seat, accidentally runs over one of the men. Maria convinces Sherman not to report the incident, but with the victim in a coma the outraged South Bronx Black community rises to demand justice and a full investigation of the hit-and-run, with Reverend Bacon (John Hancock) leading the protests.

Ambitious District Attorney Weiss (an uncredited F. Murray Abraham) recognizes the publicity value of the case. Assistant DA Kramer (Saul Rubinek) starts investigating, and Fallow is plucked from obscurity to start pumping newspaper headlines. Soon Sherman's car is identified and his life is forever altered, with a climax in the courtroom of the Black Judge White (Morgan Freeman).

An adaptation of Tom Wolfe's novel, The Bonfire Of The Vanities critiques rampant narcissism with inflated humour. Overcoming a nightmarish production cycle featuring countless casting and miscasting chops and changes, director Brian De Palma nevertheless luxuriates in creating a vivid and hyper-realistic world, whether in McCoy's Manhattan apartment or on the streets of the Bronx. And he layers on the cinematic tricks, glitz and style, including a spectacular opening single tracking shot extending close to five minutes as Farrow arrives at a gala event. 

But the problems run deep, from Farrow's boring and unnecessary narration to the juvenile comedy antics, including McCoy using a shotgun to end a party and Kramer instigating a physical courtroom fracas. And unrefined hyperbole surrounds every distasteful character. In the context of a movie studded with star names, the absence of a single empathetic character becomes a problem script writer Michael Cristofer cannot solve. Fallow has traded his career for the bottle, Maria is an over-sexed and vocabulary-challenged moron, Weiss is a villain in a suit with his eyes solely on the Mayor's chair, and Reverend Bacon is a larger than life thunderous buffoon.

Which leaves Tom Hanks stranded in the central role of Sherman McCoy, a man with apparently no redeeming qualities, making money by trading money and happy to cheat on his wife with a bimbo. Still, the film needs a victim and McCoy is the closest thing to it, but he remains a relative non-entity as the cause of racial justice is co-opted by all around him for selfish causes.

Morgan Freeman's Judge White emerges as the one individual fighting a rearguard action to safeguard some sense of decency amidst the sea of moral bankruptcy. Within a societal sensibility portrayed as rotten to the core and well beyond salvation, his climactic speechifying carries no conviction.

For all its faults, The Bonfire Of The Vanities is nothing if not perceptive. It borders on cartoonish, but the film lays bare the tsunami of materialistic selfishness and greed corroding hearts and minds, a fiery spiral reaching into every corner and always spinning downwards.

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Movie Review: Death Wish (2018)

A remake of the classic Charles Bronson vigilante thriller, Death Wish is a serviceable update without breaking any dramatic new ground.

Chicago is overrun by a deadly crime wave with dozens of shootings daily. Dr. Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is a leading hospital surgeon and operates on victims and perpetrators. He also financially supports his brother Frank (Vincent D'Onofrio), who has a chequered history with the law. On the night of his birthday Paul's family is targeted by home invaders, resulting in the death of wife Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) and leaving daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone) in a coma.

With police detectives Raines (Dean Norris) and Jackson (Kimberly Elise) not making much progress towards solving the crime, Kersey turns to vigilante justice. Armed with an illegally obtained handgun he takes to the streets and starts confronting and killing criminals. He then stumbles upon clues identifying the gang members responsible for Lucy's death, and goes after them.

The 2018 version of Death Wish does many things right. The build-up is deliberate, affording director Eli Roth appropriate time to surround Paul, Lucy and Jordan Kersey with a warm blanket of sympathy. And after the crime is committed, Roth again allows Paul to go through a grieving process and creates space for due process.

So it's only at around the halfway point that the real action starts, with Kersey taking his first tentative steps towards a one-man city clean-up job. He is far from perfect, mishandling his weapon, injuring his hand and allowing his intervention to be filmed. Then he gains a taste for it, and once the opportunity presents itself to properly avenge Lucy, Death Wish becomes a proper, old-fashioned Bruce Willis movie.

And Willis is in fine form, staying within himself and taking the most out of a Joe Carnahan script that avoids wisecracks in favour of grit and some moments of blood-drenched gore. While the movie never threatens to enter into a serious debate about vigilante justice and who gets to dole out punishment, Roth sprinkles enough references to both sides of the argument and purposefully swims away from the shallowest end of the genre pool.

Vincent D'Onofrio's role is underwritten and an obvious weak spot, but with plenty of well-edited action scenes to hustle the story along, Death Wish blasts its way to a satisfying exhibition of blood-for-blood righteousness.

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Movie Review: Tears Of The Sun (2003)

A war action movie, Tears Of The Sun has noble intentions to increase awareness of atrocities in Africa, but a feeble script never strikes the right tones.

A civil war erupts in Nigeria with the overthrow of democratically elected President Azuka by a brutal rebel army. The United States Navy conducts dangerous missions to extract foreign nationals from the unfolding chaos. Lieutenant Waters (Bruce Willis) of the Navy SEALs and his small unit of elite soldiers are tasked by Captain Rhodes (Tom Skerritt) to rescue Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) from a remote medical mission.

With the rebel army closing in Waters and his men locate Kendricks, but she insists her patients also be rescued. Waters reluctantly agrees and leads a large group of civilians towards the rendezvous site with the extraction helicopters, evading rebel patrols along the way. But both the Lieutenant and the doctor are keeping secrets from each other, and an already hazardous mission gets much more complicated when Waters starts to care about the plight of civilians and gets his squadron involved in the conflict.

Co-produced by Willis, Tears Of The Sun delves into the dirty wars of the dark continent with eyes wide open. Director Antoine Fuqua leaves no doubt the film is intended as a shocking wake-up call to the brutalities that often go unreported, and the film stops and lingers as villagers are slaughtered, raped and set on fire, child soldiers are pressed into service and mothers are maimed and their infants killed.

While Willis and his men (including stock turns by Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker and Nick Chinlund) are supposed to be the jaded veterans jolted into taking a stand by what they are witnessing, the script by Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo falls far short. With no character depth whatsoever, the film delivers plastic and prepackaged emotions and flat drama. Neither Waters nor Doctor Kendricks are provided any context or compelling intensity, and the Africans are all reduced to horribly shallow and stereotypical representations of helpless locals awaiting rescue by mostly white American men.

Stylistically Fuqua does better in portraying an eternally wet jungle aesthetic, and the few but fierce action scenes almost save the movie. One sequence features the SEALs stealthily moving against murderous rebels terrorizing a village, while the final battle is a climactic backs-against-the-wall, few-against-many epic showdown. The action is vivid, including relatively accurate portrayals of battlefield tactics.

But unfortunately Tears Of The Sun ends with a gag-inducing stand-and-cheer (literally) celebration of the all-conquering US military by ever grateful black locals, the film collapsing far from its intentions and into the most crass version of a recruitment tool targeting the easily influenced.

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Movie Review: The Jackal (1997)

An assassination thriller, The Jackal features big star names in all the wrong roles and a plot filled with mammoth holes.

In Moscow, a joint operation between internal security services MVD and the FBI results in the death of a notorious mobster. In Helsinki, the dead man's brother Terek (David Hayman) promises revenge and hires an assassin known only as The Jackal (Bruce Willis) to kill a high profile American target. The FBI's Deputy Director Carter Preston (Sidney Poitier) and MVD's Major Valentina Koslova (Diane Venora) get wind of the contract and turn to imprisoned former IRA terrorist Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere) for help.

Mulqueen and his former girlfriend, ex-Basque militant Isabella Zancona (Mathilda May), have a history with The Jackal, and Mulqueen joins Preston and Koslova on the manhunt from Europe to Canada and into the United States. Meanwhile The Jackal procures a high powered weapon and uses numerous fake identities and forged documents to carefully plan his audacious assassination.

A wholly unnecessary re-imagining of 1973's The Day Of The Jackal, the 1997 version manages to make everything much worse. Bruce Willis is stripped of his charisma and is utterly boring as a cold-blooded killer. It does not seem possible but Richard Gere fares even worse, saddled with an Irish accent and never coming close to convincing as an ex-IRA killer. And at seventy years old Sidney Poitier does his best, but loses the battle to engage as a senior FBI agent huffing and puffing across the globe.

Despite the casting horror show The Jackal may have been salvageable with a decent script, but the story of a barely-defined mobster seeking revenge by targeting an unspecified target loses all momentum early. The character of Terek as chief instigator carries promising menace but disappears entirely from the film, and the Chuck Pfarrer screenplay makes the wrong call by investing absolutely nothing in the intended assassination victim. Any potential for tension or mounting danger is lost, and the film disintegrates into a series of disjointed, routine and often irrelevant set-pieces.

Of course Mulqueen, a convict and ex-terrorist, is given full access to the inner sanctums of the FBI and becomes chief investigator, primary clue-finder and next-step deducer, the rest of the bumbling FBI team either following his instructions or actively compromising the investigation. Director Michael-Caton Jones does manage to deliver a few half-decent action scenes, but The Jackal falls through holes of its own making and shoots itself in the foot for added impact.

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Movie Review: Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

A raucous crime thriller, Lucky Number Slevin offers a delectable multi-faceted plot and jaunty execution. A busy story of gangland vendettas offers rich rewards and plenty of barbed wit.

After a series of seemingly unrelated murders including the killing of two bookies and a sniper attack, Goodkat (Bruce Willis) sits next to a young man at an empty bus terminal and recounts a strange story from 1979, when a struggling family was brutally annihilated as a result of a horse race fix gone wrong.

Back in the present Slevin Kelevra (Josh Hartnett) arrives in New York City to stay at the apartment of his friend Nick Fisher, who is mysteriously nowhere to be found. Jovial next-door neighbour Lindsey (Lucy Liu) makes friends with Slevin, but he is soon mistaken for Nick and abducted, twice: first by mobsters working for The Boss (Morgan Freeman), then by goons working for The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley).

The Boss and The Rabbi used to be gangland partners who ran the city's most powerful crime syndicate. Now they have fallen out, The Boss' son has been killed, and he wants Slevin to assassinate The Rabbi's son in retaliation. Meanwhile The Rabbi wants Slevin to repay an outstanding loan. Goodkat is lurking in the shadows, and police detective Brikowski (Stanley Tucci) tries to untangle all the motives as Slevin seeks to survive the impending mayhem.

Plenty of movies have attempted to recreate the sheer verve of Pulp Fiction; few have succeeded as well as Lucky Number Slevin. This is an in-your-face barely-in-control full throttle thriller, a white knuckle wild ride through the world of crime and punishment.

Combining numerous disparate events that slowly converge into a brilliant whole with a collection of memorable characters, Lucky Number Slevin is an intricate narrative puzzle. The film starts with the pieces all over the place, but writer Jason Smilovic and director Paul McGuigan know exactly where they are heading and how to get there. Every detail matters, and as the picture is assembled the narrative wizardry comes to the fore. Of course the plot holes are there to be picked, but overall the story of vendettas, revenge, goons and rogue assassinations is sly and resplendent.

Stylistically McGuigan deploys typical Tarantinoesque touches, including colourful marginal characters, just about everyone lying about almost everything, occasional philosophizing, brief explosions of violence, and oddities like rivals The Boss and The Rabbi occupying apartments across the street from each other. In relative terms the blood and gore are dialed back, and Lucky Number Slevin revels in the power of a single compact trigger event for all the mayhem.

The cast members stay within themselves and allow the script to star. Josh Hartnett is in the middle of the pandemonium as Slevin, and finds one of his career best fitting roles. Without stretching beyond established personas, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley offer plenty of weighty veteran talent, all three as men still trading in death when they should know better.

Breezy and fierce in equal measures, Lucky Number Slevin runs the perfect race.

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Movie Review: Looper (2012)

A science fiction thriller with a riotous premise, Looper delivers mind bending and intelligent excitement.

In Kansas of the year 2044, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is employed by gangster boss Abe (Jeff Daniels) as an assassin to kill mob targets sent back from 30 years in the future, when time travel is invented but outlawed. Abe's assassins, known as loopers, also include the high-strung Kid Blue (Noah Segan) and the more laid back Seth (Paul Dano) who is among the humans evolved to possess a low level of gimmicky telekinesis. Joe maintains a rocky relationship of sorts with exotic dancer Suzie (Piper Perabo).

The loopers all know that eventually they will kill their future self, live out 30 years in retirement before looping back to their death. When Seth fails to kill his future self, he pays a high price, but Joe learns that a vicious new mob boss known only as the Rainmaker has taken control of the future and is terminating all looper contracts.

When the future old version of Joe (Bruce Willis) loops back he evades death, and both versions of Joe incur Abe's wrath. Old Joe is on a mission to find the young Rainmaker and kill him, a quest that will involve single mother Sara (Emily Blunt), who is living on an isolated farm with her young son Cid.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, Looper blends in elements from The Terminator 2 with traditional gun-for-hire and destiny-versus-fate narratives. The result is a refreshingly original science fiction time travel action movie, with a focus on characters rather than mechanics. Joe and Old Joe admit to each other that it is best not to try and understand the mental convolutions of co-existing in the same time zone, and Johnson wisely hustles the action along towards a tidy resolution.

With a quite complicated and creative hypothesis, Johnson astutely invests almost the entire first half of the film to build a sturdy foundation. Joe's profession, employers, co-workers, sexual partner, weaponry, and the consequences of botching a job are introduced sequentially to normalize the mobster world of Kansas in the year 2044, before Willis as Old Joe and Blunt as the woman to bring them together make their appearance.

The second half then gallops forth as a smart character-driven action movie, with Johnson reserving a couple of science evolution surprises for maximum impact when needed most. And for all the innovative thinking on display, Looper starts to converge on universal human themes as it hurtles towards its climax. Motherhood, sacrifice and the power of dedicated nurturing rise to the fore.

The Kansas setting gives the film a distinctive flavour. Wide open spaces surrounded by cornfields capable of obscuring everything from vagrants to assassins create unique opportunities, and help to demystify the relatively near future.

The cast is capable, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt adding plenty of quality without getting in the way of the imaginative story. Gordon-Levitt and Willis succeed in mirroring two sides of the same damaged person, while Blunt injects the most nuance with a tough exterior hiding both vulnerability and steely determination. Looper is filled with macho guys twirling futuristic guns, but not surprisingly it's a woman who knows how best to influence the future.

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Movie Review: Acts Of Violence (2018)

A dumb action thriller, Acts Of Violence is underproduced, badly written and blandly executed.

In Cleveland, Deklan MacGregor (Cole Hauser) is an army veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. His brothers Brandon (Shawn Ashmore) and Roman MacGregor (Ashton Holmes) are better adjusted, with Brandon married to Jessa (Tiffany Brouwer) and Roman engaged to Mia (Melissa Bolona).

When Mia goes out to party with her girlfriends, she insults goons working for human trafficker Max (Mike Epps). Soon Mia is abducted and held in captivity. Deklan rallies his brothers to mount a paramilitary rescue operation, while detectives James Avery (Bruce Willis) and Brooke Baker (Sophia Bush) try to keep up with the escalating violence.

Directed by Brett Donowho, Acts Of Violence is a soulless and witless grade Z flick, stultifyingly familiar and routine. The production values are at the basic television level, with the film apparently shot in 15 days, and Willis on set for a grand total of one day.

Despite the obvious lack of polish, Donowho deserves some credit for delivering coherent, jerk-free action sequences, amidst a ridiculous plot full of holes, a complete absence of character depth, wooden acting, and stock dialogue.

The attempts to introduce familial ties as an emotional anchor flounder on the rocks of insincerity, while the PTSD theme is introduced in the first scene and then essentially ignored. While cheap action films will always be around, it is sad to see the once mighty Bruce Willis reduced to this.

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Movie Review: Color Of Night (1994)

A psychosexual suspense thriller, Color Of Night is a lurid mess.

New York psychiatrist Dr. Bill Capa (Bruce Willis) is shocked when one of his patients commits suicide. He relocates to Los Angeles to de-stress and reconnects with an old colleague, the vastly successful Dr. Bob Moore (Scott Bakula). Capa attends a group therapy session at Moore's office consisting of five disturbed patients: sex-obsessed Sondra (Lesley Ann Warren), obsessive-compulsive lawyer Clark (Brad Dourif), artist Casey (Kevin J. O'Connor), grieving widower Buck (Lance Henriksen) and the young Richie, who is suffering through a gender identity crisis.

Moore discloses that he has been receiving death threats, and one of the five patients is the likely suspect. Sure enough Moore is soon killed, and police Lieutenant Hector Martinez (Ruben Blades) asks Capa to take over the group sessions to try and identify the killer. Capa finds himself getting embroiled in the complex lives of the patients, and soon meets and starts a steamy relationship with the free spirited and mysterious Rose (Jane March).

Color Of Night is One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest with the inmates not only running the asylum but also writing the script, and suddenly all is forgiven if Nurse Ratched would only come back. Boasting a plot that can only be described as batshit crazy, the film is a bewildering mix of amateur psychiatry, salacious eroticism and slasher horror.

Produced by Andrew Vajna and directed by Richard Rush, Color Of Night ventures into a mishmash of psychological and societal topics in search of maximum shock value. The downstream impacts of child abuse, the trauma of losing loved ones, gender identity, a spectacular suicide, multiple personality disorder, murder most gory, superfluous sex and nudity, a case of infidelity linking a police officer with a surviving victim of crime, bondage imagery, obsessive compulsive behaviour, an irrelevant car chase and one attempted murder-by-car-drop are all somehow wedged into the same story.

And weaving yet another thread through the jumbled ball of psychobabble is Dr. Capa suffering from trauma-induced color-blindness, an inability to see red due to the New York suicide of his patient, a condition unlikely to be resolved by the upcoming events in Los Angeles.

It all sounds like fertile ground for bad Mel Brooks-style comedy, but there is not a hint of irony or wit to be found. Instead Color Of Night is delivered as a straight-up neo-noir, complete with mumbled intermittent narration by Dr. Capa, mostly to describe the wispy Rose every time she approaches him in various variations of not-there outfits. But to Rush's credit, he does manage to hold the outlandish plot together, and as far as the film strays away from credibility, it does adhere to a perverse logic of its own creation within all the sleazy-chic sets.

Bruce Willis cruises through the film with a general attitude of cool bemusement in what turned out out to be training grounds for a much better second outing into the world of helping troubled minds. Jane March follows up one almost-always-naked film with another, and here her performance alternates between cringe-worthy and not bad, her less flighty scenes carrying admirable intensity.

Color Of Night is bad enough to be enjoyed, a sordid exercise in excess that splatters into strangely compelling wreckage.

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Movie Review: Unbreakable (2000)

A psychological superhero origins story, Unbreakable offers interesting nuggets without quite properly meshing.

In Philadelphia of 1961, Elijah Price is born with a rare disease that causes extremely fragile bones. In the present day, security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is the only survivor - and escapes without as much as a bruise - when a major commuter train derailment kills the other 131 passengers. David's soulless marriage to Audrey (Robin Wright) is just about over, with their son Joseph suffering the consequences but still idolizing his father.

In the aftermath of the train derailment David is contacted by Elijah (Samuel L. Jackson), who now runs a comic art gallery. At Elijah's often irritating prompting, David realizes that he has never been sick in his life. With Joseph's help David tests his physical strength and is astounded at the huge weights he can lift. Audrey initiates a last-ditch attempt to save the marriage, while David still has to come to terms with injuries he sustained in a long-ago car crash that ended his promising football playing career, as well as his dislike of water.

After the remarkable success of The Sixth Sense the pressure was on writer and producer M. Night Shyamalan to create a worthy follow-up. Teaming again with Bruce Willis, Shyamalan was only partially successful. Unbreakable enjoys a dark moodiness as it delves into the psyche of a man who may be capable of a lot more than he knows. But a superhero origins story for an unknown superhero only goes so far, and there are enough plot holes to undermine some of the good work before the rushed ending arrives.

The premise of a man getting to middle age having never noticed that he may be a bit special is difficult to swallow, and raises questions about just how smart this superhero is going to be. But beyond that, the awakening of an initially disinterested and disbelieving David Dunn to his own powers is at the heart of the film, and in another understated performance, Willis plays along. Walking away unscathed as the only survivor from a train wreck that claims 131 lives is a wake up call for anyone, and Dave, depressed as he is in a dead end job, listens enough to Elijah's haranguing to start exploring the art of the fantastically possible.

The dynamics between David and his wife Audrey and son Joseph add another layer of depth to the film. Robin Wright deserves credit for soaking Audrey with grief stemming from a detached husband and a crumbling relationship, but still willing to put in the work to try and save her marriage. The father-son interactions are also intricate, Joseph demonstrating quiet resilience and carving a role for himself in his dad's transformation.

But the scenes with Elijah generally don't work as well, his story limited to a few interventions and an ending that spirals to places Shyamalan does not give himself time to follow. Overall, the film's climax is an unsatisfactory muddle, and as David comes to terms with his powers, both the protagonist and the film become less interesting. Not surprisingly, unbreakable and unaware makes for better drama than just unbreakable.

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Movie Review: The Fifth Element (1997)

A science fiction comedy thriller, The Fifth Element is a rollicking if sometimes messy space adventure.

A prelude shows friendly advanced aliens arriving in the Egyptian desert in 1914 and spiriting away for safekeeping four stones from a hidden chamber in the pyramids. The stones, protected by a lineage of priests, are needed along with a mysterious fifth element to ward off a force of evil that attacks Earth every 5,000 years.

In the year 2263, an unstoppable evil in the form of an indestructible energy-sucking dark massive planet is hurtling towards Earth. The allied aliens attempt to provide assistance but are intercepted by the mercenary Mangalores, working on behalf of evil industrialist Zorg (Gary Oldman). Enough organic matter survives from the destroyed alien ship for scientists to recreate the woman-like Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), an agile warrior and potentially humanity's only chance for survival, if only she can communicate in a decipherable language.

Leelo is soon on the run, and stumbles into the flying cab of Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), a disgruntled ex-special forces member. Korben is eventually tasked with retrieving the stones, which are hidden with an opera singer performing at an elite resort planet. Zorg and the Mangalores are also chasing the stones, while Korben teams up with Leelo (who gradually teaches herself English) and high priest Father Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm) to try and save humanity.

Co-written and directed by Luc Besson, The Fifth Element is an original, highly imaginative and enjoyably campy sci-fi romp. Although the plot often makes little sense and some aspects (including most of Chris Tucker's contribution as a celebrity DJ) offer more noise than quality, the film generates enough loony energy to ride over the bumpier bits. Besson creates a fast-paced fantastical and colourful future filled with flying cars, space travel, floating cities and alien species, but with the same mostly dumb and narcissistic humans in the middle of it all.

The comedy and action are well balanced. Korben's sardonic resignation is a perfect fit for Bruce Willis' persona, while the lithe Leeloo emerges as the best thing about the film. Jovovich finds a deft comic touch as the super-smart but communication-challenged humanoid created to save Earth but nevertheless befuddled by all that is going on around her until she finally teams up with Korben. Together they not only make for an effective off-kilter buddy duo but also give The Fifth Element a beating heart amidst all the lunacy.

And Besson makes sure to also infuse plenty of action into the latter half of his adventure. When Korben tangles with Mangalores the big guns open up, and The Fifth Element becomes a surprisingly potent action thriller, but with tongue always firmly in cheek.

Wild and wacky, The Fifth Element wows.

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Movie Review: Sin City (2005)

An adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novels, Sin City is an artistically stunning anthology crime thriller. With every frame a stylistic triumph, the film jolts the comics to life, ironically in a grim and crime-infested city where life is cheap and hope goes to die.

After a brief prologue featuring an assassin (Josh Hartnett) and his target (Marley Shelton) at a rooftop party, the film features three loosely related stories, with the adventure of detective John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) split into two chapters. With his heart close to failing, Hartigan is about to retire, and as a final mission sets off to rescue 11 year old Nancy Callahan (Makenzie Vega) from child killer Roark Junior (Nick Stahl). Hartigan's partner Bob (Michael Madsen) tries to convince him not to go through with it, but Hartigan is determined to end his career with a bang. The film's final major chapter returns to this story, with Junior identified as the son of Senator Roark (Powers Booth), and a grown-up Nancy (Jessica Alba) still in peril.

In the second story, ugly brute Marv (Mickey Rourke) is enchanted by prostitute Goldie (Jaime King), but finds her dead in his bed after a night of passion. Marv bruises his way through town to identify the killer, a revenge quest that involves his parole officer Lucille (Carla Gugino) and Goldie's twin sister Wendy. The trail leads Marv to maniac cannibal Kevin (Elijah Wood), who is protected by the all-powerful Cardinal Patrick Henry Roark (Rutger Hauer).

The third story takes place in Old Town, where a group of prostitutes rule the streets. Gail (Rosario Dawson) is their leader, and her man is Dwight McCarthy (Owen Wilson). When a gang of thugs led by corrupt cop "Jackie Boy" Rafferty (Benicio del Toro) first intimidate Shellie (Brittany Murphy) and then Gail's girls, a bloodbath ensues, with silent martial arts expert Miho (Devon Aoki) having a field day. The carnage destroys the fragile balance between the working girls and the cops. An epilogue again features the return of the assassin, as well as Becky (Alexis Bledel), one of Gail's girls.

Co-directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez with Quentin Tarantino credited as a special guest director, Sin City is a visual feast of cinematic artistry. Filmed in black and white but with isolated splashes of vivid colours, the film dives into the deep end of adult graphic novel territory, where extreme violence is a shortcut to every problem and every scene threatens to end with a gory punctuation mark.

To survive for any length in this milieu, the men possess superhuman strength, and the women use a combination of weaponry and seduction to carve out their territory. Heads are routinely bashed or severed and body parts are chopped off for fun: Sin City has no pretense of law and order and film is not for the faint of heart.

Across all its stories, Sin City easily lands its punches on traditional targets: politicians and priests are the symbols of corruption hiding behind dirty veils of authority, literally spawning and protecting generations of evil and mayhem. Prostitutes (Goldie, Gail and her entourage), cynical but honest goons (Marv), righteous killers (Miho) and honest cops willing to bend the rules (Hartigan) are the heroes of Miller's world.

Men propelled into action to protect or avenge women, who may or may not need help, is a prevailing theme powering the film. Hartigan's final mission is to rescue Nancy; Marv will tear up the town in memory of the only woman who was ever nice to him; and Dwight risks his life to try and save the ladies of Old Town from annihilation.

The Old Town segment is relatively the weakest, Dwight and the gaggle of girls tangling with Jackie Boy never quite clicking as individual characters worthy of attention, and a few too many mob and mercenary baddies show up to muddle the objective. Jackie Boy himself and the dialogue-challenged Miho emerge as the most memorable contributors, which probably wasn't the intent.

In contrast, the Marv story works best and is delivered as pure cinematic gold. The relentless revenge quest of a most ugly man perfectly fits the film's dank soul, his indestructible forward momentum cutting a swath through sin city and all the way to its religious core. Mickey Rourke as Marv has never been better, transformed into a half-monster yet with his damaged moral compass somehow still functioning.

Slick, hyperkinetic and cynical to a fault, Sin City is an enthralling experience.

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Movie Review: Rock The Kasbah (2015)

A muddled drama comedy, Rock The Kasbah cannot decide what it is and defaults to a series of abandoned plot fragments.

Los Angeles-based washed-up talent producer Richie Lanz (Bill Murray) claims to have discovered Madonna, among many other wild tales. Now he is reduced to living in motel room, his only client the willing but hapless singer Ronnie (Zooey Deschanel), who also doubles as his assistant and suffers from unmanageable stagefright. Desperate and cashless Richie accepts an offer to take Ronnie on tour to war-torn Afghanistan, where the military money is flowing and US troops crave any entertainment.

Once there, Richie and Ronnie are immediately exposed to the horrors of war. He tangles with military contractor Bombay Brian (Bruce Willis), rogue gun runners and local tribesmen, and creates a business alliance with American prostitute Merci (Kate Hudson). Richie then stumbles on the magical voice of local woman Salima (Leem Lubany) and immediately recognizes a star-in-waiting, but Afghanistan's culture may not be ready for a female entertainer.

Directed by Barry Levinson and written by Mitch Glazer, Rock The Kasbah is loosely inspired by the true story of Setara Hussainzada, who appeared on Afghan Star, a local version of American Idol. The problem is that Salima is a non-entity in the film, appearing late and then barely featuring as a character other than as the stereotypical subjugated woman in a male-dominated culture.

On the way to Salima's story Rock The Kasbah ambles along rather aimlessly, pinballing from Richie's career decline, to Ronnie's never-gonna-make-it stage antics, to encounters with fast and loose gun runners, then the mandatory working girl Merci padding her retirement account by servicing the troops, and plenty of predictable interactions with tribesmen in the desert. None of these sub-plots go anywhere, and when Salima finally enters the story, her narrative is just as tired, predictable and unsatisfying.

There is an unseemly level of throw-everything-at-the-screen desperation to the script, peaking with Richie landing in the middle of an inter-tribal coup with a bewilderingly botched climax. Stymied in his search for any cohesion, Levinson rushes the ending and leaves all the threads loose, the film packing up and leaving all the characters wondering where to go next.

Bill Murray delivers his now overly familiar older-man-out-of-place schtick, enough to rustle up some laughs and hold the center of the movie together but here buffeted by an overabundance of cultural clichés. Rock The Kasbah rolls downhill on a wayward path to insignificance.

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Movie Review: Die Hard (1988)

A brash, bold and boisterous action film, Die Hard is an exceptionally enjoyable thrill ride featuring one reluctant hero, one tall building, a gaggle of hostages and a large group of murderous terrorists.

It's Christmas Eve, and New York City police officer John McClane has just landed in Los Angeles to maybe try and patch things up with his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), an executive at the Nakatomi Corporation. John travels to the Nakatomi tower where the company Christmas party is in full swing, and barely avoids an invasion of the building by a group of well-organized and brutal terrorists. Mastermind Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his main henchman Karl (Alex Godunov) along with about a dozen armed men take all the Nakatomi employees, including Holly, as hostages, and set about opening the well-guarded corporate safe.

McClane escapes into the upper reaches of the building and initiates a one-man guerrilla war against the terrorists, picking off a few of them while trying to attract the attention of the enforcement authorities. Eventually LA police Sergeant Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) responds and initiates contact with McClane from outside the building, and a large police force gathers. Hans and his men still have surprises in hand, and the outnumbered and outgunned McClane has to fight a lonely battle just to survive and save his wife.

McClane: Mayday, Mayday, Emergency anyone copy, Channel Nine, terrorists have seized the Nakatomi Building, Century City, I repeat, unknown number of terrorists, six or more armed with automatic weapons on the 30th floor of Nakatomi Plaza.
LAPD Operator: [to other operator] I'll take this.
McClane: Somebody answer me, goddamn it!
LAPD Operator: Attention, whoever you are: This frequency is reserved for emergency calls only.
McClane: No fucking shit, lady! Do I sound like I'm ordering a pizza?!

Directed by John McTiernan, Die Hard turned Bruce Willis into a global action superstar and redefined what a high quality action movie can deliver. With a tight premise, plenty of quotable one-liners, hissing villains, a reluctant hero playing impossible odds, and no shortage of well-executed action scenes, the film unleashes an irresistible torrent of adrenaline.

The personality of John McClane is a huge part of the film's success. A classic fish-out-water hero, McClane's New York pragmatism is already being tested by the unfamiliar fluffy Los Angeles surroundings. His night gets much worse when the terrorists let loose, but McClane's streak of dark sarcasm carries through, his irritation at being forced into action the juice that keeps the evening going.

Bruce Willis brings McClane to life and finds his perfect career role. 33 years old with a prematurely thinning hair line, Willis brings credible world weariness to McClane, but makes the most impact at the personal level: Die Hard rises above typical action fare mainly due to McClane's desire for a reconciliation with wife Holly, and later thanks to the bond created over the radio between McClane and beat cop Al Powell. For all the flying bullets, shattered glass and huge explosions, Willis comes through at the personal level, creating a hero with heart, just as believable trading gunfire as he is at longing for human warmth.

Every good hero requires worthwhile villains, and McClane gets two. Decked out in expensive European threads, Hans Gruber is a distinguished killer, never hesitating to spill blood but insisting that he looks good doing it. Karl is more volatile, and runs on a short fuse once his brother becomes one of McClane's early victims. Alan Rickman and Alex Godunov deserve a lot of credit for creating a pair of hate-worthy bad guys.

The film has other troublemakers, first in the form of Deputy Police Chief Dwayne Robinson (Paul Gleason), and later two FBI agents (Robert Davi and Grand L. Bush).  Their hamfisted attempts to take charge and resolve the crisis only make matters worse for McClane, who learns the hard way that sometime the cavalry is more trouble than its worth.

Deputy Chief Dwayne Robinson: I got a hundred people down here and they're all covered in glass!
John McClane: Glass? Who gives a shit about glass? Who the fuck is this?
Deputy Chief Dwayne Robinson: This is Deputy Chief Dwayne T. Robinson, and I am in charge here.
John McClane: Oh you're in charge? Well I got some bad news for you Dwayne, from up here it doesn't look like you're in charge of jack shit.
Deputy Chief Dwayne Robinson: You listen to me you little asshole-
John McClane: Asshole? I'm not the one who just got butt-fucked on national TV, Dwayne! Now, you listen to me, jerk-off, if you're not a part of the solution, you're a part of the problem. Quit being a part of the fuckin' problem and put the other guy back on!

But ultimately Die Hard is all about the action, and the film delivers in spades. Using the building as an excellent platform McTiernan stages the action in elevator and ventilation shafts, stairwells and half-completed floors, all transformed into intriguing settings for an escalating battle between one resourceful  man and a small army of terrorists. Handguns, automatic rifles, anti-tank missiles and C4 explosives are all put to good use, as the Nakatomi plaza building takes a fearsome pounding. The climax involves a fire hose and the roof, and it remains an all-time epic action movie highlight.

Die Hard holds nothing back: this is a whopper of an action film, a perfect dose of inescapable escapism.

McClane: Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!

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