Precious Cargo

This movie is god awful. Id rather let my children talk to strangers than let them watch this. Who ever wrote this movie should be shot. Not just because the dialog, story-line, and everything in the movie sucked, but because I was wondering if the writer even knew what a writing was.

Action movie with horrible gun acting. Hardly any recoil, and at one point some of the slides of the guns were cocked back or not even closed fully. I could go on for about an hour about the crappy gun stuff, but you would want to shoot me too.

The actors, may be great. but the writing was so bad its hard for any actor to act with the lines. Did not fit situation and was really uncomfortable. I feel bad for some of these actors as this movie will seriously hurt them. Even for Willis, this was one of his worse films, and it all comes back to the writer. How could you act well when you have these kind of crappy lines.

Filming was just as bad as everything else in the movie, I felt like they enjoyed green screen a little too much, forgot what good lighting consists of, and some of the camera angles were a big sign that boasts of a low budget film.

Save yourself, save your friends, save random strangers, save the cute old lady across this street. be a public servant and don't bother with this movie, just don't.

A few weeks have passed, and that of course means we get yet another movie from the sausage factory that is of schlock producers Randall Emmett and George Furla. This is yet another effort of theirs that stars Bruce Willis. Well, actually it's hard to say that he "stars" in this movie, because once again he appears in a movie where it's clear he knocked off his few scenes in just a couple or so days of shooting.

It's just as well, because Willis gives yet another lazy performance that further shows he doesn't give much of a darn to his few remaining fans these days. Actually, Willis' sleepwalking comes across as Olivier compared to some of the other actors. It was hard to say who gives the worst performance in the movie, but ultimately I give the award to Jenna B. Kelly, who plays Logan. She doesn't seem to be trying at all to add emotion or any other signs of acting to her lines.

In fairness to Kelly and the rest of the cast, they have to deal with a screenplay that is packed with gawd-awful lines of dialogue that even the best thespians would have difficult selling to an audience. What's worse is that some of these lines of dialogue are intended to be funny, and not only are they not funny, they seem to be mocking the audience who is watching this movie.

As for the (limited) action, it's routine at best, and flat and uninteresting at its worst. You may be wondering if there is ANYTHING good to say about this movie. Well, some of the camera-work does impress at times - I wasn't expecting the sometimes elaborate moves by the camera for a straight to DVD movie such as this. Especially one that is bad in every other way you can think of.

Saw 'Precious Cargo' because Bruce Willis has done good films and given good performances in the past, 'Die Hard' is a genre landmark and his performance is iconic in that. The title and poster also intrigued and similarly the idea for the story sounded sort of interesting, despite a lack of originality. Expectations were not high though, because Willis has been past prime for a while (several bad films and has looked tired and disengaged a lot) and has been in a lot of stinkers lately.

'Precious Cargo' is yet another not good representation of him, if not as bad as 'Vice' and especially 'Reprisal'. 'Precious Cargo' is a better film to that while having similar, actually even the same, faults. It fails in the action and thrills stakes, faring very unfavourably in relation to other films seen in the genre, lots of silliness and endless predictability. Not hating it with pleasure, it's my honest opinion and my negative feelings towards it are regrettable.

Not much redeemable here, with the best thing being the promising opening scene before the film quickly goes down south in quality and not only doesn't ever recover but it gets worse.

However, for someone highly billed, Willis is used poorly (again, am seeing a pattern here), he looks tired and like he didn't want to be there. Claire Forlani also looks disinterested. The worst performance comes from Jenna B Kelly, whose performance is an awful mess of being obnoxious and generating little personality.

Visually, the film does lack cohesion, is pretty sloppy in camera work and editing and the colour scheme is so unappealingly murky. The music is too loud, should have been used far less and some of the placement is inappropriate. The direction is suggestive of inexperience, there is just no energy, momentum or finesse, the non-action oriented parts are handled so indifferently and the action is shot in a way that can be difficult to follow.

Dialogue from the very start to the predictable climax is riddled with clichés and cheese, with toe-curling howlers aplenty, and what little there is of the story has no surprises, fun or tension, is very pedestrian in pace and fails to make sense or have signs of maturity. Tension and suspense are non-existent. 'Precious Cargo' goes overboard on the ridiculousness and lack of plausibility and at other points it takes itself too seriously. What there is of the action is clumsily choreographed and routine at best, too reliant on convenience too and with not much exciting or tense. The characters are not compelling or easy to get behind, too sketchily written and with character behaviours and traits that frustrate. Do not expect every character in every film to be likeable when characters in numerous films purposefully aren't, but it is an issue if there are characters meant to be rootable and 'Precious Cargo' has that problem.

Altogether, other than the opening scene a very bad film. 2/10 Bethany Cox

This proves Hollywood has no imagination, It was nice to see Mark Paul Gosselaar but this movie has been done 10 million times before and with a much better supporting cast, writers and videographers!

This is a lame, low budget video on demand action film with the usual $1 million a day appearance from Bruce Willis. The only notable performance is from Willis's henchman, Simon (Daniel Bernhardt) when he talks to some of his boss's floozies at the poolside.

Duplicitous crook Karen (Claire Forlani) attempts to cheat crime boss Eddie (Bruce Willis) from a heist job but when he finds out he threatens to kill her unless she makes good for the full amount.

Karen goes for help to her ex lover Jack (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) who has his own crew of misfit hustlers and persuades them to steal an armoured car containing valuable diamonds but Eddie's henchmen are in hot pursuit and Jack is unsure how much he can trust Karen.

Precious Cargo has little that is original, it is a passable time waster but the smart alec dialogue from Gosselaar and his crew quickly becomes tiring and the acting from leads is bland.