terrible

Rating: 2/10 (1 November 2007)

I can't believe the scores this film is getting.
The whole film felt like it was hacked apart in the edit suite - conversations ended abruptly, scenes seemingly spliced together so that one minute the geek hacker is freaking out, the next the two heroes are chewing the fat as if nothing extraordinary had happened that day. Scenes didn't flow. They just happened.
Some of the greenscreen work was really bad. Especially all the stuff in the car interiors - you could anticipate the lorry hitting the protagonists car as the shot was so obviously a green screen shot and the lighting changed.
Dialogue was clunky, and I found it hard to comprehend much it. The two leads just seem to mumble to each other.
Somehow all the charm and wit of the Mclane character has been surgically removed by scriptwriter(s), director and by Bruce Willis. So now he's supposed to be a dinosaur, overtaken by the modern age. OK that could work, at least in recognises Bruce's advancing years, but then conversely he's now become superhuman, able to withstand multiple bullet wounds, karate kicks to the head and impossible drops and so on. That just doesn't work for me.
The whole subplot with his daughter seemed somewhat tacked on, like halfway through production someone in a committee meeting burst into the room with a box set of 24 and said "hang on guys, I've got an idea".
And why does Hollywood insist on pretending no-one uses a mouse? That get me every time with techno thrillers. All that one-handed keyboard wizardry. It just looks stupid.
All in all, pretty ropey. Must be nostalgia fuelling all those 9 star reviews.