White Elephant

Okay, Michael Rooker is a character actor who you know and love but for love nor money do you know his name?

This is an odd film - if not for Willis and Malcovich, it would be a B movie, but it's a good one - IMHO.

LOTS of bad guys! Tons of shoot 'em ups. No car chases.

The elephant in the room is Bruce Willis. Yes, this isn't his best, but he's still Bruce freaking Willis! I'm betting John Malcovich came along for the ride to be with his buddy Bruce. That's what friends do.

This is not Emmy or Globe material, but it's a fun movie to help pass a rainy afternoon or dull evening. Enjoy it for what it is.

Don't bother watching this because if you've seen the last ten movies in which Bruce Willis makes a cameo, this one is just more of the same. Gratuitous violence, tiresome, faux tough-guy dialogue, and mind-numbingly stupid gun-play don't make for much when it comes to entertainment, as if just throwing these elements into a pot will somehow produce anything fit for adult consumption.

Does this film have a story? It's hard to say when they hurl an endless torrent of blood and bullets at the audience in an attempt to distract you from the fact that if there is a story, it's too unoriginal to even mention. I've never played a video game, but I would imagine that Grand Theft Auto has more of a plot than White Elephant.

You can't even blame the actors in the movie. It's like pulling a bunch of garbage from the dumpster and expecting someone to cook a meal with it.

A few things writers of action movies should already understand:

• Drywall will not stop a round from an assault rifle, neither will a car door. Some high-powered rounds can go through an entire house and still kill you.

• If you want to kill someone on the sly, don't use a gun as it's too messy, especially if you are then going to take the body somewhere else to disposed of it. Just take the live guy to the disposal area, then get rid of him. If the cops stop you on the way there, it's a lot easier to explain a guy in the back seat than a corpse in the trunk.

• Try reading books so that everything you write isn't exactly like the last twenty movies you streamed. I doubt Hollywood writers can be bothered to read books, this seems obvious from their output of puerile doggerel like this film.

• If you can't choreograph a decent gun battle, stop thinking that five more in the film will improve things.

But when you have sub-par writers and director, even the all star casting of John Malkovich and Michael Rooker couldn't save this film. It was your typical inane B film with a cliched story and nonsense constant gun fights. Stuntman turned seasoned writer and director Jesse Johnson gave us a typical bad B production with annoyingly loud and unfitting typical B film score, a lazy script (jointly written by three writers) and terrible directing. Even casting Olga Kurylenko as the tough-gal was cringe and unconvincing, and I'm sure part of that blame falls on Johnson's failure to direct his cast properly. You can tell this is the film where Willis started having health issues, but a good director could've easily hidden that. It's an ok one time watch, especially if you're a fan of the leads. It's a generous 6/10 from me, mostly for Rooker's outstanding performance and Malkovich's small but welcoming contribution.

This film isn't a masterpiece at all, it's not terrible, but not good either. I enjoyed John Malkovich's two scenes which both included with his Ancient Greek history lessons, but didn't really see why he was even in the film whatsoever, his scenes were pretty pointless.

The actual story is a bit of a mess, but also somewhat simplistic, and the dialogue was pretty poor throughout, its like an amature wrote half of what the cast were saying.

Few too many plot contravenes throughout. The action, although comical at times, was actually good. Good action with a decent amount of gore, and a flying head near the end.

Sadly though,Bruce Willis is just a shell of his former self, how the mighty have fallen, and it's quite sad. You could tell he just filmed his scenes in about 60 minutes, and didn't really do a good job delivering his lines, just pretty much said them.

Went into this film with really low expectations but it turned out to be a silly yet slightly amusing action film. Wouldn't exactly go out of my way to watch it or recommend it to anyone, but I wasn't exactly bored for 90 minutes.

The villains in this movie are the dumbest ones ever. They act so stupid that it's impossible for them to survive till that age in their own movie realm. I don't know how and why people give green light to such movies. It's one of those 'traps' with 'Bruce Willis' and 'John Malkovich' written with caps to lure innocent film freaks.