By Gavin Waskett (London)
This film is a crime – sorry is about a crime – actually…
Warning – I’m not going to be particularly nice about this film and may drop in some spoilers, mainly because it helps me laugh at some of the absurdities of the film. So, stop reading if you want to watch this and don’t want any spoilers, or if the start of this has given you enough to go on. Dave recommended me and Shell watching this, and I’m not sure Shell is ever going to forgive him for this!
Firstly, the plot – a cop with a past (because to be a film cop, you have to have some dark secret or problem in your past, no-one has ever been the star of a film with a superb service record and just got on with their job!) hears over his radio about a criminal escaping, he is warned several times to back off and let others deal with it, but oh no, he’s a cop with a past to make up for so he is going to chase every “Bad Guy” (you’ll see why that’s in quotation marks later) down himself, no matter how many cops in cars the “Bad Guy” avoids, our man on foot never gives up, it’s just not in him to!
Anyway, that all goes to hell! And he has his badge taken!
However, the “Bad Guy” has a brother and a hostage, who happens to be connected to our dark past cops’ boss, who has just sacked him. And as we know, our dark past cop never gives up, it’s just not in him to! So, he goes ROGUE!
Throw in some nonsense about this experienced cop with a dark past needing the help of a young reporter, whose online news feed is streaming his every move (in my opinion a sure fire way to let the “Bad Guy” know where you are and where you’re going to be, because you are literally announcing it to anyone with a device and the internet. Which is pretty much EVERYONE including the” BAD GUY”!
Both Aaron Eckhart and Ben McKenzie, you are far too good for this nonsense. I hope they had a tax bill to pay of something! Dina Meyer, wasted, completely wasted as the news boss who is just out for ratings. I mean, seriously her character did nothing apart from add snarky headlines to the newsfeed.
I can’t leave this without given honourable awful mentions to two things, firstly the dialogue. To save me being snarky myself, here are some examples.
“Your brother was a bad guy, that makes you a bad guy” – Hence the quotation marks.
“Your brother was [email protected] you’re a [email protected], that means your mum is a [email protected]”
Followed later by…
“His dad is a [email protected] as well.”
Bliming heck, he really doesn’t like this man’s family does he!!
“You dirt bag” – He’s a cop with a dark past, who also happens to be stuck speaking in 1950s cop talk as well.
“This is why I do my job.” – What as an actor – gawd, I hope not! And secondly, the final scene, now there are spoilers here, so if you’ve got this far and still want to check it out, give this next few sentences a miss…
The hostage is buried in a cemetery, the cop and reporter are on their way there and it is announced over the live stream that they need your help. Cue, cop and reporter digging up the grave to get to the hostage, and then dramatic pause and a shovel hits the dirt next to them, followed by another dramatic pause and then the end of a hammer on the other side, the camera pans out and hundreds of people are heading their way, using skateboards, finger tips, probably even a spoon to help them dig out the hostage. Still SPOILERS – I have two problems with this, one the amount of people trying to fit around such a small space as a burial plot with lots of tools rising and falling would cause untold injuries and crushed people and more importantly, as the cop with a dark past and the pointless reporter arrived in the cemetery and ran about twenty metres to the plot, they passed a digger, a machine intended to dig out burial plots and no-one, not one of the hundreds of people thought about using it, they used a skateboard but not the bliming big digger.
So, onto my mark out of 5. Oh, who am I kidding, I can’t mark this as that would involve using negative numbers and I’m can’t bring myself to do that to any film. Suffice to say, I won’t ever be watching this again and I hope I’ve saved some of you from 98 minutes of daft nonsense, but I also hope that some of you rise to the challenge and sit and watch this and see if I’m being overly harsh. (Sorry couldn’t resist one last one!) (And again!)