BEFORE: Bruce Willis carries over to his fifth film this year, and I'm only at the midpoint, believe it or not - so four more films with him after this, and I hope they're all better than "Hard Kill". The bar is set really low there, because they all kind of HAVE to be better than "Hard Kill". This is the downside of juxtaposing similar movies, the bad ones look much worse by comparison to good movies - I'm recording "Tenet" today on demand, to dub a copy to DVD, just in case I want to watch it again when it's no longer available on HBO, and I'm reminded of what a fantastic movie that was, how it blew my mind and kept me awake at night. But then, why can't other films be as good as "Tenet"? Why can't EVERY film just be good? Or at least better?
THE PLOT: A former CIA operative is kidnapped by a group of terrorists. When his son learns there is no plan for his father to be saved, he launches his own rescue operation.
AFTER: All right, at least this represents some improvement, when compared with "Hard Kill". And remember, most every film this week is coming from the same studio, EFO Films, or Emmett/Furla/Oasis, who apparently signed Bruce Willis to a multi-year, 700-film contract, all of which got dumped to Netflix as some kind of package deal. But it's really NOT a good sign that "Hard Kill" is more recent, because that means their output has been getting steadily WORSE, so along the way, quality control has been declining, or somebody seems to have given up. "Extraction" was released in 2015, five years before "Hard Kill" and also five years before the Chris Hemsworth film with the exact same title. (Remember, you can't copyright a title, but it does make sense to avoid titles that have already been used, especially within the same genre, like, say, action movies. Confusion in the marketplace doesn't help anybody, except maybe the smaller or worse film, just a bit.)
There are a few things to like here, I appreciate the idea of an ex-CIA operative who's got a grudge against his old employers. And I can appreciate the same guy who's secretly keeping his son from qualifying for field work because he knows exactly how dangerous it can be. In the opening sequence, set 10 years in the past, somebody figured out the identity of Agent Leonard Turner, also his home address, and they targeted his wife and son while he was away on an operation. His son couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger and shoot the enemy invading his home, but thankfully Leonard's colleague, "Uncle Ken" arrived on the scene in time to save him. Whether Ken is the boy's actual uncle, or this is just a term of endearment, is perhaps a little unclear.
Fast forward to the present, and young Harry Turner is a CIA agent himself, all grown up, only he's being held back by his father's persuasive letters to keep him confined to a desk. All that changes when Leonard is kidnapped by someone Arabic while undercover, trying to obtain a device called the Condor, a mobile device that can hack the entire world's telecommunications system. Yep, it's a similar device to the one seen yesterday in "Hard Kill", only with a little more explanation here about what, exactly, the device is capable of. I told you some screenwriter has been playing "Mad Libs" with these scripts, here's some more evidence.
Harry is deliberately kept out of the loop on his father's kidnapping investigation - this makes sense, he's much too close to the hostage emotionally to be expected to act rationally. But what kind of movie would we have if every character just acted rationally? So he hacks into the meeting to figure out what's going on with his father, thus proving that he's got the skills to be part of the investigation. Wait, what? He should be penalized for disobeying his boss' orders, but I guess the CIA doesn't work like that, I guess they reward initiative, or just maybe some writer doesn't really understand how the CIA works. My bet's on the latter. So then Harry is escorted off the premises, since he's NOT part of the official rescue operation - hell, maybe there IS no official rescue operation - so naturally Harry breaks free from his escort and starts his own, going rogue. Only in the movies, right? This move in real life would probably get him kicked out of the agency.
I get it, you can't really expect a movie about government agents to make real logical sense - most CIA work is probably very boring, involves a lot of surveillance and paperwork and is nothing like movie James Bond stuff. Harry was stationed in Prague, and so naturally he hops a plane to Newark, where his father disappeared, and thanks to the magic of cinema, he's there in a flash, has no jet lag, and goes straight to work, and somehow the trail isn't cold yet. And you gotta admit, Harry's very bold here, the whole world thinks his father's being held captive by some Saudi arms dealer, and Harry's the one saying, nope, I think that's not true, let me start my own investigation in this New Jersey biker bar, that should do it.
He meets up with Victoria, a female operative in the field who's also been tracking the Condor device, and wouldn't you know it, he once had a relationship with her, so working together won't be awkward at all. She keeps trying to explain how things really work in the field, since this is his first operation, and he keeps pushing back to get her to do things his way. Yeah, good luck with that. Meanwhile the CIA is secretly staying in touch with his "partner" and has also dispatched another operative to kill him, should things really get out of hand. Sure, the CIA can spare an extra agent to hunt down Harry, but they can't spare anybody to locate Leonard - it seems like maybe they should have enough agents to do both things, but what do I know?
Victoria and Harry work their way up the chain, from biker bar to garage mechanic to that hot new nightclub in town before they find the very American non-Arabic arms dealer who they think has Leonard and the Condor device. Yeah, it does not go well, but no more spoilers here. What all these Mad Libs action movies have in common is that eventually everybody's true motives come out, and we eventually find out who was responsible for that mess years ago, and maybe things aren't really what they seemed to be at the start. Obviously, some films handle these twists better than others, this one is not TOO bad on that front.
I just realized that I didn't remember what happened at the end, so I must have fallen asleep once all the secrets were revealed. That's not usually a good sign. So just now I pulled up Netflix on my phone and re-watched the last 10 minutes. Yep, that's what happened, I fell asleep. But good news, the world was saved from the thingy that could have knocked out all our phones and prevented 5G from becoming a thing.
A couple random points - yep, Bruce Willis shot all his scenes for this in one day. Like I said, if you're a filmmaker and you can get Bruce Willis, then get Bruce Willis, but it's only for a limited time, so you'd better move things around to make the most out of that. As for Gina Carano, the last time I saw her in a movie, "Haywire", I read in the notes that all of her lines were dubbed by another actress, Laura San Giacomo. Now I understand why - in order to be in a motion picture with sound, which are all the rage these days, an actor needs to open their mouth when they say their lines, you'd think they'd teach this on the first day of acting school. And Kellan Lutz has been in some very big movies, and I guess he's doing well on the "FBI" CBS shows right now, but he's also been in a lot of clunker movies - to me this one's right down the middle, not great but not terrible either.
NITPICK POINT: Nice try, attempting to make Alabama look like Newark, New Jersey, but that just didn't work. I'm guessing that Newark is a lot more built-up and as a result just doesn't look that nice. Unless there was another teleportation device used or the characters drove from New Jersey to Alabama in record time, but that doesn't make sense either.
Also starring Kellan Lutz (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Gina Carano (last seen in "Haywire"), D.B. Sweeney (last seen in "Captive State"), Dan Bilzerian (last seen in "War Dogs"), Steve Coulter (last seen in "The Hunt"), Heather Johansen (last seen in "First Kill"), Martin Blencowe (ditto), John Dauer (ditto), Roman Mitichyan (last seen in "Warrior"), Christopher Rob Bowen (last seen in "Reprisal"), Rob Steinberg (last seen in "Lay the Favorite"), Joshua Mikel (last seen in "Stuber"), Nick Loeb (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), David Gordon (last seen in "Marauders"), Richie Chance (ditto), Lydia Hull (ditto), Summer Altice (last seen in "You, Me and Dupree"), Tyler Jon Olson (last seen in "Hard Kill"), Lindsey Pelas, Sierra Love, Nathan Varnson, Nicole Gomez, Linda Lind, Olga Valentina, Jeffery Patterson, Sydney Fine, Jillian Sheen, Jacques Devore, Jenna B. Kelly.
RATING: 4 out of 10 angry bikers (attacking one at time, of course...)
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