Force of Nature

<<

Now Playing

>>

It does happen every once in a while when I end up checking out a movie starring someone who is very controversial in society today. In this case, I'm taking a peek at Mel Gibson's latest film, but more out of a love of Emile Hirsch, who stars in a couple of past favorites. But the question remains; is Hirsch enough to save it? Spoiler alert, the answer is a big fat "no".

Even without reading into Mel Gibson being in this (he's at that point where I see him as a fantastic director/actor but not a good person), there's simply not much to this movie. It's pieced together kinda weird, and by the end of it, I was mostly just confused. Now, that could just be me and the way my mind works, but upon seeing other reviews, it appears that I'm certainly not alone on that.

The film opens in San Juan, Puerto Rico at 4pm, in the middle of a disastrous hurricane, where we see a handful of cops in the midst of a struggle. When one of the cops fires, potentially hitting the wrong person, the opening credits start rolling. We then go back in time by 8 hours where we see a heist taking place, which appears to be the stealing of a Picasso print... appears to be.

We then cut to the cliched cop at the end of his rope, Officer Cardillo (Emile Hirsch) toying with the idea of suicide over the loss of a loved one - it's Mel Gibson's scene from 'Lethal Weapon', interestingly enough. Anyway, he is partnered up with another cop, Jess (Stephanie Cayo) to lead an evacuation of a precinct due to the brewing hurricane. One of the local residents, an former cop named Ray (Mel Gibson) refuses to leave, despite the advice from his daughter, Troy (Kate Bosworth).

Eventually, the characters from the beginning of the film end up crossing paths with the cops while trying to pull off a heist during the hurricane. Though I don't believe we ever really know what they're after. The whole thing just ends up being one big action movie cliche with some truly strange twists and turns including a killer dog who hates cops, and might as well turn this into a monster movie.

Once Mel Gibson gets off his ass and the shooting starts, it gets at least kinda fun, but as mentioned before, there's a lot of cliche moments in this. There also seems to be a lot of jumping around back and forth in the timeline, but I may just be blinking and missing things. For example, we see Gibson gun a guy down in his bullet proof vest, but then a later scene shows him getting said vest out of his closet. It's kinda hard to keep track of.

But with all that said, is it worth the watch? Well, the obvious hurtle probably is Mel Gibson and having to be able to look past his, shall we say, real life moments he's provided us over the years. But say we all put our differences aside for an hour and a half (after all, I managed to with 'Hacksaw Ridge'), there is NOTHING this movie does that's new, it moves too damn fast, and it gives you very little leeway to care for any of the characters involved. There are some half-decent fight scenes, and the storm amplifies the action, but that's about it. Though it bears some similarities, this is no 'Die Hard' - not even close.

By the end of it all, I kinda just wish I went for a different movie this week. Nine times out of ten, unless it's something incredibly unappealing, I tend to lean towards a major release, which is sometimes hard to determine with this whole VOD thing. Sometimes I dunno what was meant for the theater vs what was meant for VOD, and if this wasn't meant for theatrical release originally, I can give it a bit more slack. But even with that said, I'd sooner recommend any number of action movies that take place inside one building - 'Die Hard', 'Dredd', 'The Raid: Redemption'; all much better movies. I don't think I found it to be as horrible as most might, but it's still not very good.

2/5

---