(Movies fail at the box office, and many more fail to even find release into theaters. When one of these dead on arrival titles arrives on disc they go under the knife of the forensic video-examiner, all in the hope of determining the causes of death in the marketplace. Be forewarned any who wish to see the film – this piece is entirely a SPOILER.)
Coming off a lengthy political run as the governor of California -- and a public humiliation in his personal life -- Arnold Schwarzenegger made a less-than triumphant return to theater screens this past January. This became his first starring role in nearly a decade, and audiences yawned at the news. Ironically the first month of 2013 saw a glut of violent action pics coming out with his
Expendables co-stars in leads, and they all uniformly became ignored by the public. Jason Statham meandered in his
Parker effort, Stallone’s
Bullet To The Head couldn’t crack $10 million, and Arnold barely did better with this try.
Korean director Jee-Woon Kim guides Arnie through an empty-headed enterprise with elaborate and farcical action sequences, relentless shoot-outs, and the repetitive use of roadblocks. Reduced to a small town sheriff Arnold carries gravitas but little else, groaning through some scenes but holding his charisma well enough. Let’s get this theatrical failure onto the slab and find out why people didn’t cross the ticket border to watch.
00:01:09 Diluted Tableau
On a desolate road, 9 miles outside of Las Vegas, a State Trooper is parked in the dark. We get a sense of the subtlety this film will possess as he is shown eating a donut.
00:01:56 Elevated Foreshadow Levels
As Officer Gluten is sucking glaze off his fingers a pair of headlights in his rearview mirror are turned off. Seconds later his windows rattle and 197mph appears on his radar gun. His conclusion; to radio in that a smart-ass was piloting a low-flying jet – in the desert, at street level.
00:03:55 Locale Anesthsia
We cut to Sommerton, Arizona, where the aged Arnold Schwarzenegger is Ray Owens, sheriff to a tiny border town. Arnold tries to put his past anti-Semitic charges behind him when he uses a Yiddish invective towards the Mayor
00:05:27 Invasive Pathos
At a local diner Ray encounters two truckers having breakfast. He suspects they are not long-haul auto parts delivery guys; possibly this is a sign of a cagey past in law enforcement, or possibly because they break character by becoming truckers who tip the waitress exorbitantly.
00:06:10 Septic Introduction
Johnny Knoxville appears as a wacky resident with a gun fetish. He’s with two deputies trying out a high-powered pistol when the sheriff drives up. Ray berates his officers -- because a cop learning to be proficient with firearms in a gun-porn film is bad, I guess?
00:08:57 Commercial Toxicity
The truckers arrive on a local farm to set up shop for a devious plot. Their truck is emblazoned with Royal Purple Synthetic graphics, the official motor oil of murderous drug cartel kidnapping mercenaries.
00:09:56 Septic Introduction
Veteran character actor Harry Dean Stanton is Farmer Parsons, barking at ring-leader Peter Stormare to get off his farm. Stanton’s grizzled persona suits him here, right up to the point he is shot off his tractor in poor CGI.
00:13:26 Ruptured Visual
I was looking for Schwarzenegger’s redemptive moment, where you detect Arnold returning to his cinematic glory of years past. Seeing him drinking a beer on his patio -- in a bathrobe while wearing Crocs -- was the opposite of what I had in mind.
00:15:37 Iatrogenic Direction
In Las Vegas, FBI supervisor Forrest Whitaker addresses a group of agents regarding an upcoming prisoner transfer. In order to fill us in on the activities over a dozen agents were called in and only told about working on transferring an international drug kingpin 45 seconds before the mission. That lack of preparation will lead to trouble on this mission, is my guess.
00:17:19 Weakened Impulse
The lack of preparation has led to trouble. During the transfer a crane with an electronic magnet attaches to the prison van and hauls it to a rooftop. This occurred because the federal convoy arbitrarily stopped in the middle of a street for no discernible reason.
00:21:03 Arrested Physics
The drug kingpin, Gabriel Cortez, eludes the FBI because of an elaborate plot involving dozens of henchmen and accomplices scattered conveniently across Vegas. One way to tell if that bellhop at your resort is secretly employed by the Columbian cartel? He has a neck tattoo.
00:26:42 Blunt Force Dialogue
To tout the merits of Chevrolet a security video shows Cortez in a specially modified Corvette Zero-1, said to have been stolen from an auto show, with a modified engine achieving 1,000 horse power. Whitaker mulls the concept:
AGENT JOHN BANNISTER:
I got a psychopath in the Bat Mobile. How am I supposed to stop that?!
00:28:19 Weakened Impulse
Roadblocks are put up to capture Cortez. He escapes nearly ten or so police cars -- by simply driving past them. I guess the cops needed to be briefed on the concept of the “--block” portion of the term.
0035:32 Plot Stimulant
Another roadblock is set up, but this time the cops get it right by actually sealing off the road. Cortez anticipates the learning curve of the police by using gunmen to cut down the squad and then having a dump truck outfitted with a cow-catcher to clear the road for his arrival.
00:36:32 Cliché Malignancy
Sheriff Ray arrives at the farm where Farmer Parker’s body has been found. His deputy (Luis Guzman) details the scene as he suspects it was a robbery gone wrong. This keeps alive the Hollywood custom of announcing this particular theory when we already know it is completely wrong.
00:38:45 Technologic Thrombosis
Back on the highway the super-Corvette – which we were told is faster than a helicopter – is being pursued by a helicopter. Cortez slams on the brakes and cuts off the headlights as the copter passes over. The Feebs announce on the radio, “
We’ve lost visual! This is because Cortez now relies on an infrared monitor, and the FBI chopper has neither night vision, nor thermal imaging capabilities.
00:45:44 Arrested Physics
As Ray pieces together the murder two deputies follow tire tracks out to a ravine where work lights flood a project. They receive gunfire and then the lights are turned off so the shooters can rely on night-vision goggles. Despite this advantage somehow Ray sneaks up on them in his speeding SUV with his roof lights flashing, running over one gunman.
00:45:49 Adverse Activity
Thundering into the firefight, who has time to use electronic window switches? Certainly not Ray, who sends his elbow through the glass to begin firing his gun at the assailants.
00:48:07 Cauterized Plot Cavity
They recover Deputy Jerry, who has been shot, but he soon ends up dying. My guess is this is largely due to Ray speeding through town with his sirens blaring, only to pull up to the police station and not a hospital.
00:51:04 Plot Stimulant
We now come to understand what this entire enterprise is all about:
Cortez employs gangs of mercenaries to free him from the feds, hires over a dozen stand-in cons in Vegas, has people steal a million dollar concept show car, buys off the female federal agent with $3 million, and sends an entirely different crew into the desert at a border town in order to construct a mobile assault bridge to allow him to cross the border at a narrow point in the nearby canyon. All of this is entirely plausible and the absolute easiest way for him to enter Mexico.
00:51:15 Blunt Force Dialogue
While we have accepted Arnold’s fractured English for all these decades it is still odd when nobody in a movie’s universe acknowledges the fact that we have a guy named Ray Owens burping out lines, like:
Vee’ve bin engeeged in uh firefight vit deese gize!
00:53:42 Arrested Physics
A S.W.A.T. has been dispatched to Sommerset. In the daylight Cortez approaches on the highway and at 160mph he passes them and spins around, racing in front of one truck in reverse. He then slams on his brakes and the SUV launches over the hood of the fiberglass Corvette, taking out the Hum Vee of the other team members. Now Sheriff Ray will have to face the criminal element with only his ragtag posse.
01:00:56 Cauterized Plot Cavity
The outmanned good guys will need some way to combat the criminals. Remember Johnny Knoxville from earlier? Well he becomes deputized because his unemployed character just happens to be in possession of a Hollywood-backlot-sized armory that would cost a modest fortune to assemble.
01:05:25 Depleted Character Concentration
While I don’t wish to impugn the thespian skills of Mr. Knoxville, I’d dare suggest if he were able to more convincingly convey the manic nature of his character then the wardrobe department may not have had to work overtime in order to construct outfits which express the “Zany” attributes for our benefit.
01:07:33 Iatrogenic Direction
It has been a long time since we have been treated to a roadblock scene. Thankfully our craving becomes sated with more constructed on the streets of Sommerton.
01:10:03 Cranial Atrophy
Peter Stormare arrives with his mercenaries. One resident walking by sparks another firefight. Now I personally have never engaged in a lengthy gun battle, but I have to question why she would choose to not take cover in a building but instead run directly into the middle of the crossfire.
01:13:02 Adverse Activity
Ray's crew pilots a school bus and uses it to crash through the very cars they just set up as a roadblock.
01:14:03 Weakened Impulse
After spinning the bus to a stop the back door opens and Ray guns down most of the assassins with a high-caliber war gun. However despite this advantage Stormare stands up with just a pistol and somehow chases them off.
01:19:23 Cranial Atrophy
By now I have counted at least NINE times people have run into the middle of the street during an intense automatic weapons gun battle.
01:22:25 Adverse Activity
Remember that gap in the cars created by the bus crash? Yea, Cortez arrived and just drove through it.
01:25:11 Chronicle Seizure
There is a mildly interesting car chase by Ray and Cortez through a corn field, but then deep in the stalks the two cars suddenly sit idle. For one full minute of screentime they do . . . NOTHING!
01:29:04 Collapsed Climax
Cortez trots from his wrecked car and approaches the bridge, only to be met by Ray who is standing in the middle. This means he impossibly ran past Cortez, across the ravine, got on the bridge and ran back across – completely undetected, and all in less than a minute.
POST MORTEM
While a gun-porn feature may have interest it needs to carry some dramatic heft to justify the expended ordinance. Here we are instead served with cartoonish sequences and comedic attempts which undermine any interest. Based on this effort, and the failings of his contemporaries along with him, Arnie and company may need to pass the torch over to a new generation of action stars.
At the very least they need to pick a project that generates interest in audiences, rather than derision.