Acts of Violence

An '80s drive-in style shoot-em-up revenge formula that once would have been a vehicle for Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent in their later days. Was not expecting to get through it, but better production quality than I expected and decent 'better than the script deserved' acting made it an almost painless diversion, although the script/logic is too drive-in shallow to allow the attempted emotional triggers to fire and, thus, recreates one of life's difficult/interesting questions: 'What was the point?'

This is one of those movies you watch when there's nothing else to see. It's been (over)done many times before. The acting was better than expected, even for Bruce Willis who's been questionable in his past roles. The directing was the major issue here. This film lacked direction to the actors - it felt as if they were on their own in some scenes and in others the dialogue and action could have been better portrayed. Part of that was also the camera operator direction, again the directors job. The writing also had some plot issues and the editing could have been tighter. Never mind the lousy score throughout the film. 6.5/10 rounded up to a 7 for B-list actors doing a better than expected job.

Acts of Violence (2018) This is an action film about a woman kidnapped by human traffickers. Her fiance and his ex-military brothers set out to track her down and save her before it is too late. It stars Bruce Willis, Mike Epps, Cole Hauser, Shawn Ashmore, Sophia Bush and Melissa Bolona. It has received generally unfavorable reviews and hasn't done well at the box office. This film was mishandled from an advertising standpoint. Sure, Bruce Willis is a selling point, but unless he's the main star, he shouldn't be advertised as such. The film itself is pretty good. It's a common theme recently popularized by the Taken series. Someone has been kidnapped or killed and our hero/anti-heroes come to the rescue and/or seek revenge. Throw in a cop who's trying to do things through legal means, and you have a film. It can be executed well, i.e. the aforementioned Taken. It can also be managed poorly, there are too many of these to list. This film falls in the middle.

I never review movies here. All I want to say about this movie is that I was suspicious of this movie from the start. I was almost certain I was going to be turning this off after 5 or 10 minutes. But an hour in and I'm still watching it. I actually paused it to look something up about the movie, and happen to catch some of the reviews.

So I read in a few of them that this movie is basically a revenge fantasy for gun nuts(That's an actual quote(paraphrased) from one of the reviews). Well this isn't a spoiler, and I'm only saying it becuase it's only spoken for a second and then forgotten, but the 2 older brothers are rangers. That's all I have to say. The rest of the movie is exactly what would happen if 2 rangers had their sister kidnapped, and they knew where she was.

Usually I'll watch any action movie happily. Especially one starting Bruce Willis as a main character. This film however is drop dead awful. Unwatchable. From the gimmicky and unprofessional editing to the delay in the bullets hitting their mark.

Unrealistic chases and fight scenes where they cut costs by using cameras at various angles to mask the actual fighting. I could only watch 7 or 8 minutes of this torture before I had to stop. Probably the cringiest I have ever felt when watching a movie. So terribly terribly bad.

I usually watch any more regardless of what IMDB rating it got if it has an actor or two that I like. This film however would receive an absolute zero from me. Instead of checking this movie out in the cinem rewatch a classic. Trust me. You'll thank me later.

P.S This is my first time writing a review. I created an account with the sole purpose of writing this scathing and honest review.