BEFORE: After that Santa Claus movie, I'm back on heist films. But really, if you think about it, isn't the Santa Claus story REALLY a heist story, only in reverse? I mean, here's a guy who's an expert in breaking into every house in the country, at like lightning speed, and the only difference between him and a thief is that he GIVES you stuff instead of takes it away. Sure, that's an important distinction, but really, it's kind of the same principle, right? Get in, don't get seen, eat the cookies, drink the milk and get out without being seen. Santa is the legendary, ultimate second-story heist guy.
Mel Gibson carries over again from "Fatman", where he played a happily-married Santa who just happened to be married to a Mrs. Claus of color. Not a coincidence, I'm thinking, if Mel was really on the apology tour and trying to prove he's not racist. (But you know what that means, then.) It's great to see Santa being faithful to Mrs. Claus, because I know the temptation just HAS to be there. After all, Santa knows where all the naughty girls live, and he also knows when they're awake. Just saying.
THE PLOT: A gang of thieves plan a heist during a hurricane and encounter trouble when a cop tries to force everyone in the building to evacuate.
AFTER: Right off the bat, I recognized the opening logo at the start of the film - this was made by the production company that made all of those Bruce Willis Action movies a few years ago, the ones that were all made on the cheap, and each one only had Bruce Willis in it for a few scenes, so you just KNOW they shot all of his scenes on the same day, because they could only afford him for one day of their shoot. Hell, maybe they hired him for five days and shot all of his scenes for ten movies, back to back, who can say?
I also recognized a bunch of the background players, like Tyler Jon Olson, from the same group of films, which includes "Precious Cargo", "Hard Kill", "Reprisal", "Extraction" and "Acts of Violence". So I don't even have to look it up, I'm 95% sure this was shot in Florida, not Puerto Rico where the story takes place. They had just a few too many aerial shots of the real Puerto Rico, which makes me think they were over-selling that point, trying to cover up the fact that they shot no scenes there. Huh, i was wrong, shot in New Mexico. OK, but yesterday I was able to tell that "Fatman" was shot in Canada, not Alasks, because of the supporting cast of Toronto actors. Yeah, I may have seen a few too many movies. I'd say last week was an all-Canadian week except "Bandit" was set in Canada and FILMED in Georgia. The U.S. state, not the former Soviet republic.
Amyway, in tonight's film a gang of bank robbers tries to pull of an art heist from a Puerto Rico apartment complex in the middle of a hurricane. Which only sounds a little less dangerous than a gang robbing a casino vault in Las Vegas in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. But that happened too this year, I don't want to forget about it. But come on, it's like Mad Libs, right, somebody in Hollywood just names a noun to steal, a city, a type of building and a disaster, and that's a movie. A gang tries to rob a safe full of gold from an airplane during a hostage crisis, and that's "Lift". Right?
OK, maybe I'm over-simplifying things. There's really a LOT going on here, maybe too much, and maybe it all comes together neatly in the end, and maybe it's a little too neat. The lead is Cardillo, a former NYC police officer who got disgraced after a shooting that went wrong. Like, really wrong. So he ended up on a police force in Puerto Rico, and he's checked out, he doesn't really care about the job, he's just biding his time while he contemplates suicide. Then during the hurricane he gets paired up with a female rookie and they're assigned to clear buildlings, to make sure everyone has been evacuated. Before long they're sent to a buildling where two old men, one a retired cop, are refusing to leave. By coincidence, it just happens to be the same building where another suspect accused of stealing meat from a grocery lives, and he's got a pet that needs to be fed, a very hungry cat. (hint hint, he was trying to get 100 pounds of meat to feed his cat. Nope, nothing suspicious about that at all...)
By another coincidence, the art thieves strike the building soon after the police arrive, and they find the safe in the basement where one of the older men may have stashed some very valuable paintings. No luck, the safe is empty, so they have to search this whole complex, room by room, which naturally puts them into contact with our two young police officers, also the retired cop (who's getting way too old for this shit...) and his daughter, who happens to look a lot like the girlfriend Cardillo had back in NY, and come on, that's not a coincidence, they're just setting up the ending WAY in advance.
The retired cop's daughter is a doctor, and she's trying to get him to go to the hospital for his dialysis, also it's the safest place for him to be if a bunch of art thieves are going to be coming around. But they miss their window for evacuation - too much standing around discussing their back-stories, I think - so now they all have to hunker down in this apartment complex and make the most of it.. And wouldn't you know it, the police radios don't work during the intense storm, so they can't call for back-up, they're cut off from society and they're going to have to fight the thieves, like "Home Alone" style. Only without the comedy and the holiday-themed booby traps.
Things go from bad to worse when that cat-owner is mauled by his own very-hungry cat, and so they have to find a doctor in the building, or at least some medical supplies. Then the rookie police officer gets captured by the thieves, and meanwhile Cardio and his future love-interest are shot at while looking for those medical supplies. Even worse than that, the retired cop frees the rookie, but then he remembers that being in the movie any longer would require another day's pay to Mel Gibson, so he manages to get himself shot, because the filmmakers just can't afford that.
Finally the thieves track down the other old man and learn that there's a room in his apartment JUST filled with valuable paintings, some of which have been lost since World War II. It's a big payoff for the thieves, they take Cardillo's uniform and the keys to his police van, and they're in the clear, they'll be richer than they ever imagined, as long as they don't fall for the oldest trick in the book. And it's pretty easy to figure out exactly what that's going to be.
The official word on this one is that it's not terrible. However, it's not all that great either. That company I was talking about that cranked out all those stinker Bruce Willis films is called EFO, Emmett/Furla Oasis Films. I have no idea how this comany manages to stay in business when their films have budgets of $15 million and tend to gross under $1 million, like this one did. That's just not a viable business plan, unless they're laundering money or they're a front for a criminal organization - it's worth looking into, but that's just my opinion.
Also starring Emile Hirsch (last seen in "An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn"), Kate Bosworth (last seen in "Barbarian"), Stephanie Cayo, David Zayas (last seen in "13"), Jasper Polish (last seen in "The Astronaut Farmer"), Will Catlett, Swen Temmel (last seen in "Bandit"), Tyler Jon Olson (last seen in "Precious Cargo"), Jorge Luis Ramos, Blas Sien Diaz, Joksan Ramos, Julio Ramos Velez (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Jorge Antares (ditto), Jasvier Ortiz Cortes (ditto), Sebastian Vazquez, Jesy McKinney, Xavier Reyes, Luillo Ruiz, Johanna Rosaly, Rey Hernandez (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Jerry D. Medina, Leslee Emmett (last seen in "Hard Kill"), Anil Raman, Geoffrey M. Reeves (last seen in "Reprisal").
RATING: 4 out of 10 "oxy-moron" pain pills
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