The Cold Light of Day [DVD]

The action thriller genre has been well established long enough for most movie fans to know what to expect before a film of this type even started rolling. Good guys? Check. Bad Guys? Check. Give us a setting, let the players loose, surprise us with a few twists here and there before serving us a satisfying finale. Simple enough formula right? Unfortunately, The Cold Light Of Day seems to have failed in almost every aspect in this simplistic formula to make a decent film.

We have two of the Hollywood's biggest names headlining the movie: Willis (who doesn't like Bruce Willis in everything? Although his screen time in this movie is less than 20 minutes long), and Sigourney Weaver, who's fantastic in everthing she does, you'll love her as a villian as much as the only woman who's ever fought an Alien Queen, and kicked that thing halfway across the galaxy. And of course, we have the young and charismatic Henry Cavill leading the film. Every single woman I know swears that they want to marry him and have his children, so, what could possibly go wrong with this movie?

One word: Script.

Scripts for the action thriller genre have been recycled to death, now, I have nothing against recycling good scripts, but for a film that ran for almost 100 minutes, it was quite amazing for me to see just how much time was wasted on repetitive action sequences and recycled dialogues that served nothing to move the story along, and at the end of it, you feel like you've been given these sideline tickets to witness all these chaos and mayhem, but was never really allowed to participate in what was really going on.

The father-and-son relationship was not fleshed out properly, (let's forget about the story with the half sister, it basically means that you won't get any steamy scenes involving Henry Cavill's character with this vixen he's related to), there was supposed to be this tension between dad and son, but before anything was played out or explained fully, the dad exits the film. The rest of the family members were so dispensible (their combined screen time was less than that of Bruce Willis') that by the time you are halfway through the film, you'd forgotten they were kidnapped in the first place.

And let's not forget the one thing that sets the entire film in motion: the briefcase. Appearantly the contents of that briefcase is so secret that no one, not even the audience is supposed to know what was in it. So, in the end, I couldn't help but feel like I've been cheated 100 minutes of my life watching this film. So much more could've been written, so much more could've been said, and so much more could've been revealed, but instead, the movie ended before it has even begun.

OMFG. Where to begin?

Please don't let comparisons with Bourne make you buy this load of rubbish. The 'hero' in this one (so boring I even forget his name) is not fit to lick Bourne's boots.

I made the huge mistake of thinking I would enjoy this film due to the presence of Sigourney Weaver and, to a slightly lesser extent, Bruce Willis. I can only imagine they had silly amounts of money waved at them and so deigned to be part of this movie.

The 'hero' (yes, I'll keep on using the quotation marks) unnervingly resembles Andy Murray. He is a pen-pusher yet during the course of the movie uncannily develops the ability to load and fire a gun, to drive like Jenson Button, and to withstand several severe beatings with just a bloodied nose to show for his troubles.

If you like GOOD action movies, don't buy this. In fact, if you like any decent movie, don't buy this. You will regret it, I promise you.

Abduction 2, only this time it's in Europe and Sigourney Weaver is the bad guy. The cast are all bored and some of the dialogue is laughably poor, and the framing, even worse. The most unforgivable sin, a lot of the pivotal action scenes are shot with poor lightning at night, with that troublesome shakycam present too. To say you can't see anything is hugely underselling the point. Then again it's probably better that way.