BEFORE: OK, things are moving forward, as they do, and behind the scenes I'm working on my documentary chain, which will happen sometime in the summer, I can't really be more specific right now, but since as usual it will have a few films about musicians ("Summer of Soul", and recent documentaries about Sparks Brothers, Rick James and Gordon Lightfoot are definite possibilities), comedians (Dick Gregory, Betty White, John Belushi and Don Rickles) and various other famous people (Rita Moreno, Jacques Costeau and the creators of "Sesame Street", if I can manage all that) I'm treating it like a big set of concert performances, and right now we alll just don't know when concerts will be possible again. I'll keep you informed, but I'm in no rush, summer's the perfect time for docs.
Also, as the Bruce Willis chain rolls on (he carries over once again, from "First Kill") and it's been eating away at me that I overstuffed my January, and this action film kick that I'm on is now scheduled to drag into February. February 1 is traditionally the start of a month-plus of romance films, in the last ten years I've been late by one day only one time - and this year I've been seriously thinking about starting the romance chain on February 6! It's madness! I've never started this topic so late, not in the last ten years, anyway! I'd resigned myself to this because I couldn't really see what to cut - sure, it would have been easy to cut the terrible Bruce Willis and Nicolas Cage movies planned, only I haven't seen them, so I don't know which ones are most terrible, not yet anyway.
So, I made a decision, I'm cutting most of the Nic Cage movies from January's schedule - try not to panic or celebrate too much, depending on how you feel about him. The answer's been staring me in the face all this time, I just didn't want to recognize it - I've got the whole year ahead of me, I can cut out 7 of the Nic Cage films from January (leaving one behind, but I'll explain when I get there) and I can try to get to them ASAP in March, right after the romance chain ends. I even already see a way to do that, so Mr. Cage is hereby rescheduled for mid- to late March. And we'll start up the romance chain on February 1, as nature intended - by then I should be desperate to get out of the action movie genre. Hell, I already am.
But moving these films to March solves a couple of problems, again, all caused BY ME when I stuffed too many "Must See" films with Asian actors into January, ones that were NOT part of the original plan. Sometimes I just see new paths and feel I have to take them, so that's why the plan needs to be flexible - and there was so much overlap among these action films that excising a small section CAREFULLY and CORRECTLY means that the chain will just close up around the hole - so really, I don't know why I'm even telling you about the plan, except I promised you some Nicolas Cage, and I will deliver, eventually. And perhaps in March two films on my list with Nic Cage that are temporarily unavailable will become available again, on another platform. It's certainly possible.
THE PLOT: The work of billionaire tech CEO Donovan Chalmers is so valuable that he hires mercenaries to protect it, and a terrorist group kidnaps his daughter just to get it.
AFTER: Man, this movie was DUMB! I'm not allowed to use the "R" word in reviews any more, but let's just say that if this movie was rated "R" it didn't stand for "restricted". I wish I'd known how bad this one was, I would have skipped it and given myself the night off, that would have been preferable to watching it, by a long shot.
Imagine this, if you will, a billionaire tech CEO hires a team of mercenaries to protect him and his invention, while he meets with the terrorist who's kidnapped his daughter. But while showing them the deserted warehouse where the exchange is going to happen, his assistant lets him know that this isn't just a walkthrough, in preparation for the day of the potential attack, THIS IS THE DAY. Because we all know when you hire armed bodyguards, the absolute LAST thing you want to do is to give them a chance to prepare, it's better to just throw them right into the fire. It keeps them on edge, you see, it's better if they don't have a chance to gather intel, proper equipment, extra ammo, a good night's sleep - that's just going to make them SOFT. This could be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
"Hi, welcome to the team, I hope you packed a gun and some snacks, because the terrorist is already on the way over." What a crock. And the terrorist is named "The Pardoner", which is probably the worst name for a villain I've ever heard, and I read comic books where Spider-Man fights the Lizard, the Sandman and the Green Goblin. Not to mention Doctor Octopus, the Chameleon, the Grizzly and the Vulture. "The Pardoner" has all those guys beat. Did he get this name for his eternally forgiving nature, nah, I don't think so, so Sweet Jesus, WHY?
There are so many stupid moments here, like the team complaining about the large number of windows in the warehouse, how this makes everyone vulnerable to, say, sniper fire from outside. But nobody DOES anything about this, like block the windows, or stay away from the windows - so, they're AWARE of the danger, but they don't care enough to do anything about it? Huh? Or later, during the attack, when all the good guys left alive sort of just pick a room and hole up in it, because the terrorists couldn't POSSIBLY go floor by floor and search room by room to find them. Just going into a random room does NOT constitute "hiding".
The worst is probably this machine, the MacGuffin, the thing that the Pardoner wants, which is called Project 725, which is a device that, you know, DOES stuff. The Pardoner wants it because with it, he can take over the world, by, umm...doing what, exactly? Controlling things? Yeah, sure, but HOW? Is it like Ticketmaster, where he gets to impose a fee on every transaction everywhere, will it make planes fall out of the sky like 5G transmitters, or will he take mental control of every human like with a Cerebro device? Yeah, nobody really knows. But the billionaire knows the codes that will activate it, and the terrorist needs the codes, he tries roughing up the billionaire's daughter, but he can't KILL the daughter, because then he'll NEVER get the codes. So the Pardoner and the billionaire are at an impasse, and the writer couldn't even think of a way to end that, so they just make the Pardoner leave the room for a bathroom break or something so the billionaire can somehow slip out of his loose restraints. Lame.
Meanwhile the hired mercenaries keep getting shot, because none of them seem to understand the concept of hiding behind cover, even though there's plenty of cover in the warehouse. Which is odd because one team member complained at the start about how there were "too many places to hide" there, but then when the firefight starts and they NEED to hide, a lot of them forget to do exactly that. It's one thing to be well-paid for a mission, but you need to be ALIVE at the end of the mission to spend that money.
This one's even worse than "Cosmic Sin", and that's saying something. This has a perfect score of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, I sort of wished I'd checked that first, but it's not something I'm in the habit of doing. My bad.
Also starring Jesse Metcalfe, Natalie Eva Marie, Lala Kent, Texas Battle (last seen in "Marauders"), Sergio Rizzuto (last seen in "Reprisal"), Swen Temmel (last seen in "Boss Level"), Tyler Jon Olson (also carrying over from "First Kill"), Jon Galanis (also last seen in "Marauders"), Jacquie Nguyen, Leslee Emmett, Timothy C. Sullivan, Alex Eckert.
RATING: 2 out of 10 scenes with more debating than shooting
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