Hmmm... I know it's only 81 Min's long, but it's really hard to keep your brain turned off for all that time when something this trite and just plain lazy is offered up. I shan't review the plot (such as it is-I got the impression it was scribbled down on a cigarette packet after a night of heavy drinking, and never redrafted afterwards), because it's already been exhaustively picked apart elsewhere.
What really struck me about this offering was the total lack of engagement and empathy for any of the characters. Mitch Brockden (Dominic Cooper) is characterless and colourless, a devoted family man who thinks nothing of jeopardizing that family's future and well-being by his rash actions, a career attorney and putative politician who risks all by such awful courtroom etiquette that he exposes himself to possible disbarment, and then gambles it all yet again with illegal, unauthorized independent action. Samuel L. Jackson (Clinton Davis) just wires in his performance by the numbers-he seems to have lost his quality control radar, and is now appearing in any old rubbish. The only other cast member worth mentioning is Gloria Reuben, as the leading Homicide Detective, but even her performance is nothing better than you'd see on any 60 minute detective show on network TV, and many of those are far better... The film is full of superfluous and overused clichés (how many more times are we going to see a protagonist try and use a cellphone that has no signal), and riddled with inconsistencies and 'plot holes' (see elsewhere). There also appear to be key scenes that have been either edited out, or deleted, leaving the viewer bemused.
All in all a classic illustration of how not to make a movie. Either pare the plot down slightly and use it in an hour-long TV show, or rewrite the whole thing THINKING about the plot, and making it at least remotely believable. Lazy, inconsistent, ill thought-out, badly cast, and completely unbelievable.
What really struck me about this offering was the total lack of engagement and empathy for any of the characters. Mitch Brockden (Dominic Cooper) is characterless and colourless, a devoted family man who thinks nothing of jeopardizing that family's future and well-being by his rash actions, a career attorney and putative politician who risks all by such awful courtroom etiquette that he exposes himself to possible disbarment, and then gambles it all yet again with illegal, unauthorized independent action. Samuel L. Jackson (Clinton Davis) just wires in his performance by the numbers-he seems to have lost his quality control radar, and is now appearing in any old rubbish. The only other cast member worth mentioning is Gloria Reuben, as the leading Homicide Detective, but even her performance is nothing better than you'd see on any 60 minute detective show on network TV, and many of those are far better... The film is full of superfluous and overused clichés (how many more times are we going to see a protagonist try and use a cellphone that has no signal), and riddled with inconsistencies and 'plot holes' (see elsewhere). There also appear to be key scenes that have been either edited out, or deleted, leaving the viewer bemused.
All in all a classic illustration of how not to make a movie. Either pare the plot down slightly and use it in an hour-long TV show, or rewrite the whole thing THINKING about the plot, and making it at least remotely believable. Lazy, inconsistent, ill thought-out, badly cast, and completely unbelievable.