The first 5 minutes are the best in the whole movie. The bad guys look great and the movie has a great look and initially there's a great feeling of tension...
However, as the movie progresses, everything just seems to fall apart to the point where the last half of the movie is straight up terrible. As the ending unfolds, it becomes almost surreal how bad the script, direction, and acting all are.
Overall, Meloni's performance is slightly above average, not great, but acceptable....why you would cast him and immediately give your movie the feel of a high budget episode of Law and Order is odd to me, but whatever.
Bautista (who I loved in Guardians) falls flat, but that seems largely a fault of the script/directing.
*spoiler* Greenier (who I've liked in Entourage, Devil Wears Prada) just seems really weird throughout the movie. I guess he was trying to portray the double-sided nature of his character, but he doesn't pull it off. His acting feels really stiff and contains zero emotion. The result is that I had absolutely no feeling one way or the other about what happened to his character in the end.
Willis just sorta phones it in...not great, not bad. Just there.
Despite the average performances by the big stars, the biggest problems are the directing, supporting cast, and the editing/cinematography.
Casting is weird in that the better it is...the less you think about it because the actors don't feel like actors...they feel like they ARE the characters. However, bad casting stands out immediately, and that's what happens here. Pretty much everyone in a role directly tied to the plot just stands out due to how bad their acting or fit for the role is. Willis' assistant in the beginning seems so out of place in business setting that it's distracting. The girl playing the reporter feels like a Vinnie Chase fangirl more than anything else. The scene with Meloni and TJ is so awkward and forced...and the lines are terrible.
Pretty much everyone else feels like they came straight off the set of a bad network drama....something that isn't helped (and the director should be aware of) by casting Meloni as a FBI agent.
*spoiler* Once things move to the police station, we witness a scene so badly written, acted, directed, that you realize the movie is going to be really bad. This is compounded by the fact that the director also tried way too hard to make you care about the bad cop character (wife's cancer), his acting is so bad that it just takes you out of the movie.
Combine the bad casting, acting, directing with bad editing and it just snowballs into a force that's damn near unstoppable.
The problem is that it's not always all these factors all at once, but it's the fact that there's rarely ever a point in the movie where one of the factors isn't present (e.g. in a well acted, directed scene, the bad editing takes you out of it, in a well edited scene, the directing/acting is so bad it takes you out of it, etc)....The result is just a movie that feels really poorly put together throughout its 2 hour run time.
And finally, the director was just not able to really tell the story very well. The entire movie feels like it was made by a guy who was following an outline that analyzed the "cinematic elements" of the Usual Suspects...the flashbacks, background being told by characters within the movie, etc...
*spoiler* In the beginning we see that Willis' character is getting fed details about the crime scene in a way that immediately exposes him as being shady. This removes all suspense, intrigue, etc. that MIGHT have been built up around his character. It feels like the director was so aware how convoluted the plot was he felt the need to start spelling it out for you from the beginning, which only undermines any sort of mystery, suspense that he's trying to create....that the director doesn't understand this just doomed the movie from the get go.
*spoiler*It's a shame because the movie looks great and if the plot had probably one or two less twists, (especially if they'd dropped the dirty cop plot line) and more depth given to the story behind those parts the movie might have actually been decent despite all the problems.
Instead, the movie tries to pack in 2-3 movies worth of plot twists into 2 hours.
However, as the movie progresses, everything just seems to fall apart to the point where the last half of the movie is straight up terrible. As the ending unfolds, it becomes almost surreal how bad the script, direction, and acting all are.
Overall, Meloni's performance is slightly above average, not great, but acceptable....why you would cast him and immediately give your movie the feel of a high budget episode of Law and Order is odd to me, but whatever.
Bautista (who I loved in Guardians) falls flat, but that seems largely a fault of the script/directing.
*spoiler* Greenier (who I've liked in Entourage, Devil Wears Prada) just seems really weird throughout the movie. I guess he was trying to portray the double-sided nature of his character, but he doesn't pull it off. His acting feels really stiff and contains zero emotion. The result is that I had absolutely no feeling one way or the other about what happened to his character in the end.
Willis just sorta phones it in...not great, not bad. Just there.
Despite the average performances by the big stars, the biggest problems are the directing, supporting cast, and the editing/cinematography.
Casting is weird in that the better it is...the less you think about it because the actors don't feel like actors...they feel like they ARE the characters. However, bad casting stands out immediately, and that's what happens here. Pretty much everyone in a role directly tied to the plot just stands out due to how bad their acting or fit for the role is. Willis' assistant in the beginning seems so out of place in business setting that it's distracting. The girl playing the reporter feels like a Vinnie Chase fangirl more than anything else. The scene with Meloni and TJ is so awkward and forced...and the lines are terrible.
Pretty much everyone else feels like they came straight off the set of a bad network drama....something that isn't helped (and the director should be aware of) by casting Meloni as a FBI agent.
*spoiler* Once things move to the police station, we witness a scene so badly written, acted, directed, that you realize the movie is going to be really bad. This is compounded by the fact that the director also tried way too hard to make you care about the bad cop character (wife's cancer), his acting is so bad that it just takes you out of the movie.
Combine the bad casting, acting, directing with bad editing and it just snowballs into a force that's damn near unstoppable.
The problem is that it's not always all these factors all at once, but it's the fact that there's rarely ever a point in the movie where one of the factors isn't present (e.g. in a well acted, directed scene, the bad editing takes you out of it, in a well edited scene, the directing/acting is so bad it takes you out of it, etc)....The result is just a movie that feels really poorly put together throughout its 2 hour run time.
And finally, the director was just not able to really tell the story very well. The entire movie feels like it was made by a guy who was following an outline that analyzed the "cinematic elements" of the Usual Suspects...the flashbacks, background being told by characters within the movie, etc...
*spoiler* In the beginning we see that Willis' character is getting fed details about the crime scene in a way that immediately exposes him as being shady. This removes all suspense, intrigue, etc. that MIGHT have been built up around his character. It feels like the director was so aware how convoluted the plot was he felt the need to start spelling it out for you from the beginning, which only undermines any sort of mystery, suspense that he's trying to create....that the director doesn't understand this just doomed the movie from the get go.
*spoiler*It's a shame because the movie looks great and if the plot had probably one or two less twists, (especially if they'd dropped the dirty cop plot line) and more depth given to the story behind those parts the movie might have actually been decent despite all the problems.
Instead, the movie tries to pack in 2-3 movies worth of plot twists into 2 hours.