Acts of Violence

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.

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?'

Wow after reading some of the bad reviews, I almost didn't watch it. I love the way people go out of the way to watch a movie that they know is a B grade action movie and then come on imdb and write a review that discredits everything you SHOULD expect in a B grade action movie. So let me write a list of things that you should expect in a B grade action movie and check those off first: Amateur script- check, Amateur story - check, Amateur acting - check, but above expected, Amateur camera work - check, but again better than usual, Plot Holes - Check. I like B grade action movies and when compared to the rest (and I've seen a LOT), I'd give this a solid 6.5 as it kept me interested and entertained for the majority of the 86 minute run-time and that's all that really needs to be said.

Three brothers take on human traffickers after the youngest has his wife snatched after a night out with her girlfriends. The acting was passable; the script could have been made up as they went with just some ad-lib tough guy talk. There were some plot holes as expected with a B-grade action flick but nothing that a few shootouts couldn't overcome. Lots of angry people in this one but living in Cleveland might do that to a person. I've seen enough of Bruce Willis' latest movies to know that he'll basically make a cameo appearance so he doesn't need to be on set for more than a day or two. He gets his check and they can use his face to attract an audience. This followed the same scenario but at least he does get to shoot a few bad guys in this one. He had one facial expression the whole time...annoyance. I didn't go into it expecting much so I wasn't disappointed. A quick time-waster that won't strain your brain.

Bruce has been pumping out some crud lately so I figured this was another addition to the awesome genre of films 'My face is on the cover but I ain't in the movie!'. He isn't the main driving force behind the picture but he is in it enough to count.

The movie does get more ridiculous as it goes but for some reason I was ok with that. Maybe I was in some kind of stupor because things were so much better than I had hoped?

I genuinely enjoyed the movie, Hauser was great in this (I had just finished re-watching Pitch Black so I was hating on him lol).

Give it a go :).